THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


L.  £.  E. 


MEN,  WOMEN,  AND  COLLEGES. 

GIRLS  AND  EDUCATION. 

ROUTINE  AND  IDEALS. 

SCHOOL,  COLLEGE,    AND   CHARACTER. 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 
BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 


GIRLS  AND  EDUCATION 


GIRLS 
AND  EDUCATION 

By  LeBaron  Russell  Briggs 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

<Cfje  fctuersibe  |3re0s  Cambridge 


COPYRIGHT,    igil,  BY  LB  BARON   RUSSELL   BRIGGS 
ALL   RIGHTS    RESERVED 


CAMBRIDGE  •  MASSACHUSETTS 
PRINTED  IN  THE  U.S.A. 


Education 
Library 


t, 


TO  MY  DAUGHTER 


881611 


CONTENTS 

I.    TO  THE  GIRL  WHO  WOULD  CUL- 
TIVATE  HERSELF  i 

II.    TO  SCHOOLGIRLS  AT  GRADUATION     29 
HI.    TO  COLLEGE  GIRLS  ?5 

IV.    COLLEGE  TEACHERS  AND  COLLEGE 

TAUGHT  117 


TO  THE  GIRL  WHO  WOULD 
CULTIVATE  HERSELF 


TO  THE  GIRL  WHO  WOULD 
CULTIVATE  HERSELF 

FOR  a  clever  boy,  no  matter  how 
poor,  to  rise  as  a  man  to  his  own  level 
is  so  common,  especially  in  America, 
as  to  excite  no  comment.  His  level 
may  be  that  of  the  uncultivated  rich, 
the  self-made  man  of  business,  or 
that  of  the  literary  scholar:  whatever 
it  is,  if  he  has  energy,  courage,  and 
a  fair  chance,  he  reaches  it.  All  this 
may  be  true  of  a  girl;  but  a  girl  sel- 
dom gets  what  a  boy  would  call,  in  his 
own  case,  a  fair  chance.  In  most  of 
the  learned  professions  she  is  still 
eyed  with  disfavor;  in  the  effort  to  go 
to  college  she  has  many  more  sympa- 
thizers than  of  old,  but  few  who  feel 
that  a  college  training  is  for  her  a  ne- 


4  »  TO  THE  GIRL  WHO  WOULD 

cessity ;  in  business,  beyond  steno- 
graphy, typewriting,  and  such  other 
subjects  as  are  taught  at  commer- 
cial schools  and  paid  for  by  small 
or  moderate  salaries,  she  can  rarely 
compete  with  men.  There  is  no  get- 
ting round  the  fact  that  a  girl  is  a 
girl,  and  that  as  such — whatever  her 
courage  and  her  cleverness  —  she  is 
hampered  in  the  rough  struggle 
for  advancement,  distinction,  and 
wealth.  A  few  women  of  exceptional 
attainments  and  privileges  earn  large 
salaries;  but  compared  with  those 
who  marry  people  that  earn  large 
salaries  their  number  is  insignifi- 
cant. Through  marriage  or  inherit- 
ance most  women  win  such  material 
wealth  as  they  possess,  and  with  it 
such  opportunities  for  culture  and 
intellectual  pleasure  as  well-spent 


CULTIVATE  HERSELF  5 

wealth  affords.  Yet  in  our  country  an 
unmarried  girl,  with  only  her  own 
efforts  to  support  her,  may  lift  her 
life  above  its  drudgery  and  may  be- 
come in  greater  or  less  degree  a  cul- 
tivated woman.  I  assume  that  she 
has  fair  health,  though  many  girls 
not  physically  strong  do  what  I  have 
in  mind.  The  principal  requisites 
are  common  sense  and  courage. 

Common  sense,  like  humor,  is  a 
saving  quality,  showing  its  possessor 
what  not  to  do,  as  well  as  what  to  do; 
and  by  it  all  ambition  may  fitly  be 
tested.  No  girl  can  learn  too  early 
that  there  is  a  vast  difference  between 
feeling  too  big  for  a  place  and  being 
too  big  for  it,  and  that  feeling  too  big 
for  one's  work  and  surroundings  sel- 
dom if  ever  results  in  culture.  Rather 
it  breeds  discontent,  vanity,  idle- 


6       TO  THE  GIRL  WHO  WOULD 

ness,  and  not  infrequently  vice. 
Sometimes  it  is  accompanied  by  a 
dull  persistency  which  achieves  the 
means  without  the  end.  Nojustper- 
son  will  deny  the  merit,  or  even  the 
success,  of  the  intelligent  dull,  or 
will  fail  to  see  in  their  success  hope 
for  himself  and  the  race;  but  every 
just  person  of  experience  will  beware 
of  artificially  lifting  the  unintelligent 
dull  to  a  level  above  their  own,  a 
level  at  which  they  cannot  be  main- 
tained without  constant  "boosting." 
**  It  is  better  to  be  a  good  dyer  than 
a  poor  preacher,"  said  a  shrewd 
gentleman  to  an  ambitious  mill- 
hand  whose  quality  he  suspected. 
The  ministry  offers  a  startling  illus- 
tration of  the  danger  in  tempting 
men  by  large  scholarships  and  the 
hope  of  social  respectability  to  a  life 


CULTIVATE  HERSELF  7 

for  which  their  sole  fitness  is  a  kind 
of  negative  virtue.  '*  He  ought  never 
to  go  into  the  ministry,"  said  a  dis- 
tinguished clergyman  of  a  youth 
helped  through  college  by  a  scholar- 
ship of  three  hundred  dollars  a  year 
because  of  his  ministerial  purpose. 
"  Why  not?"  I  asked.  "Isn't  he  a 
good  fellow?"  "  My  dear  sir,"  was 
the  answer,  '  *  the  church  is  cursed 
with  good  people."  The  minister's 
work,  as  every  efficient  minister 
knows, needs  men  that  are  filled  with 
manly  life,  men  of  wisdom,  of  in- 
stinctive— not  professional — sym- 
pathy, men  of  fearless  leadership, 
men  of  power ;  and  no  other  profes- 
sion has  suffered  so  much  from  the 
artificial  infusion  of  weaklings.  The 
teacher's  profession  suffers  similarly, 
though  less.  ' '  I  do  not  believe,"  said 


8      TO  THE  GIRL  WHO  WOULD 

an  able  graduate  of  a  college  for  wo- 
men, "in  taking  a  girl  out  of  her 
mother's  kitchen,  where  she  is  of 
some  use,  and  giving  her  scholar- 
ships to  make  her  a  second-rate 
school-teacher/'  Gifted  Hopkins,  in 
Dr.  Holmes's  "Guardian  Angel/' was 
born  to  sell  tape  and  to  write  verses 
for  the  local  newspaper.  These  were 
decent,  honorable  occupations  from 
which  the  effort  to  rescue  him  for 
higher  things  would  have  come  to  a 
humiliating  end.  Thus  the  girl  who 
has  a  right  to  rise  and  who  rises  to 
some  purpose  is  she  who,  not  mis- 
taking vanity  for  refinement,  uses 
her  woman's  sensitiveness  in  doing, 
not  in  avoiding,  her  daily  work;  who 
sees  in  that  work,  however  mean, 
something  great  and  divine,  and  by 
the  light  that  never  was  on  sea  or 


CULTIVATE  HERSELF  9 

land,  is  led  from  the  common  things 
which  it  glorifies  into  intimate  com- 
munion with  those  who  have  shed 
the  glory  upon  the  painted  canvas  or 
the  printed  page.  Her  state  of  mind 
is  as  far  as  possible  from  mere  un- 
leavened restlessness.  "  Restlessness 
without  a  purpose,"  says  Phillips 
Brooks,  "is  discontent ;  with  a  pur- 
pose, progress."  Of  the  thousand 
men  and  women  that  we  see  on  every 
holiday  hanging  to  the  electric  cars 
or  dragging  themselves  and  their 
children  through  the  crowded  street, 
few  gain  rest  and  refreshment ;  most 
are  squandering  time  and  strength 
and  money  in  the  excitement  of  dis- 
contented motion.  They,  too,  have 
achieved  a  means  without  an  end, 
activity  without  progress .  One  of  the 
first  lessons  for  a  girl  (as  for  any  one 


10     TO  THE  GIRL  WHO  WOULD 

else)  is  the  lesson  of  doing  faithfully 
and  heartily  the  work  that  is  before 
her,  of  growing  by  doing  it,  not  by 
neglecting  it,  of  fitting  herself  for  big 
tasks,  so  far  as  she  is  capable  of  them, 
by  doing  her  own  little  tasks  in  a 
big  way,  not  by  shirking  them  as 
unworthy  of  her  gifted  and  aspiring 
soul.  "  They  tell  me,"  said  one  of 
the  stupidest  and  laziest  and  weakest 
men  I  have  ever  met, ' '  that  I  should 
be  a  good  deal  of  a  man  if  I  lived  in 
a  different  kind  of  a  place  " ;  and  with 
this  in  mind  he  became  less  than  half 
a  man  where  he  did  live.  If  you  have 
dishes  to  wash  and  want  to  read 
poetry,  wash  the  dishes  first.  I  have 
known  servant  girls  with  consider- 
able education  and  culture;  but  I 
do  not  count  among  these  the  girl 
whose  mistress,  seeing,  in  the  mid- 


CULTIVATE  HERSELF  11 

die  of  the  morning,  that  the  beds 
were  not  made,  discovered  her  lying 
on  a  bed  with  a  novel  in  her  hand. 
Granted  that  a  girl  does  her  work 
in  the  right  spirit,  she  has  still  a  good 
deal  of  time  to  herself.  It  may  come 
in  long  stretches  or  in  odd  minutes  ; 
but  even  in  odd  minutes  it  is  pre* 
cious.  The  girl  who  makes  the  most 
of  herself  is  she  who  first  does  her 
work  generously,  and  next  uses  her 
odd  minutes  well.  To  use  them  at  all 
requires  flexibility  and  concentra- 
tion, qualities  that  seldom  come  with- 
out urging,  but  qualities  that  insure 
efficiency.  To  hold  your  attention 
fixed  on  one  thing  and,  when  that  is 
done,  to  fix  it  instantly  on  another 
and  hold  it  there  as  if  the  first  had 
never  been  —  this  is  what  every 
active  life  demands  and  what  few 


12     TO  THE  GIRL  WHO  WOULD 

human  creatures  can  adequately  sup- 
ply :  yet  something  like  this  is  in  the 
power  of  us  all ;  and  we  should  work 
for  it  as  we  value  helpfulness  and 
happiness.  The  best  training  for  it 
is  the  simple  habit  of  industry. 

For  the  girl  who  would  cultivate 
herself,  the  natural  resource  in  odd 
minutes  is  reading.  By  reading  fif- 
teen minutes  a  day,  it  is  said,  a  per- 
son may  become  cultivated.  Most 
girls  read  more  than  that ;  but  most 
girls  are  not  cultivated.  What  do 
most  girls  read  ? 

Here  I  come  to  one  of  the  melan- 
choly aspects  of  human  nature  in 
general,  if  not  of  feminine  nature  in 
particular.  Ruskin's  question,  "Do 
you  know  that  if  you  read  this,  you 
cannot  read  that?  "  is  so  simple  that 
it  seems  to  slight  the  hearer's  in- 


CULTIVATE  HERSELF  13 

telligence  ;  yet  it  is  justified  by  the 
persistent  unintelligence  of  the  read- 
ing world.  With  one  life  to  live,  with 
each  day,  and  each  minute,  when  it 
is  gone,  gone  forever,  we  read  the 
illustrated  scandals  of  eloping  cho- 
rus girls  or  of  their  kinswomen  in 
high  life  at  Newport  or  New  York. 
Beyond  this,  we  read  the  fiction  of 
the  day  whether  in  magazines  or  nov- 
els ;  and  we  get  it  no  longer  at  our 
own  cost  from  such  circulating  libra- 
ries as  filled  the  empty  head  of  Lydia 
Languish,  but  from  free  public  libra- 
ries given,  it  may  be,  to  the  people 
by  generous  men  and  women  who 
have  thought  to  educate  thereby  the 
neighbors  and  friends  of  their  youth 
—  temptation  offered  in  the  name 
of  culture  to  those  who  eagerly  ac- 
cept the  offering.  Fiction  is  a  fine 


14     TO  THE  GIRL  WHO  WOULD 

art  and  as  truly  an  instrument  of  cul- 
ture as  music  or  painting ;  but  de- 
based fiction  is  scarcely  more  culti- 
vating than  the  song  of  the  vaudeville 
specialist  or  the  chromo  awarded  to 
the  preserver  of  ten  soap  wrappers. 
The  stage,  too,  is  an  instrument 
of  culture ;  but  the  stage  has  pro- 
duced both  Shakspere  and  theRogers 
Brothers. 

I  can  readily  understand  the 
state  of  mind  that  makes  intelligent 
"  solid"  reading  difficult  if  not  im- 
possible. A  girl  who  has  stood  all  day 
behind  the  counter  of  a  "  stuffy  " 
shop  may  lack  the  nervous  vigor  for 
philosophy  or  political  economy  or 
for  any  history  not  narrative  and 
romantic.  To  such  a  girl  relief  and 
delight  may  justly  come  through 
fiction ;  and  with  them  may  come  the 


CULTIVATE  HERSELF  15 

beginning  of  culture.  No  intelligent 
girl  can  read  "  The  Newcomes"  or 
' '  Pendennis  "  or  * '  Henry  Esmond  " 
or  "Vanity  Fair"  without  some  share 
in  the  joys  and  sorrows  and  sympa- 
thies of  that  great  mind  and  greater 
heart  which  conceived  them  all ;  wi  th- 
out  some  inward  sense,  however  ru- 
dimentary, of  what  it  means  to  say 
things  worth  saying  and  to  say  them 
well;  without  some  discrimination 
between  gentle  manners,  in  high  life 
or  in  low,  and  vulgarity  of  peasant 
or  of  prince.  To  love  Thackeray  is 
almost  a  liberal  education;  yet  this 
great  and  intensely  lovable  master, 
one  of  the  greatest  and  most  lovable 
in  all  fiction,  lies  uncalled  for  on  the 
shelf,  condemned  without  a  hear- 
ing as  a  pessimist  and  a  cynic.  "Ah, 
my  worthy  friend,"  said  he,  "it  is 


16     TO  THE  GIRL  WHO  WOULD 

astonishing  how  soft-hearted  these 
cynics  are.  I  dare  say,  if  we  could 
have  come  upon  Diogenes  by  sur- 
prise, we  should  have  found  him 
reading  sentimental  novels  and 
whimpering  in  his  tub."  ' '  He  could 
not,"  says  a  critic,  "have  written 
*  Vanity  Fair '  as  he  has  unless  Eden 
had  been  shining  in  his  inner  eye." 
Again,  no  healthy-minded  girl 
comes  face  to  face  with  the  courage- 
ous womanliness  of  Elizabeth  Ben- 
net,  rising  through  sweetness  and 
good  sense  above  a  mother  of  humil- 
iating vulgarity,  or  the  delicate  con- 
science of  Fanny  Price,  undervital- 
ized  but  charming  in  her  sensitive 
devotion,  without  learning  much 
from  the  author  of  * '  Pride  and  Pre- 
judice" and  of  "Mansfield  Park"; 
without  learning  the  efficiency  of 


CULTIVATE  HERSELF  17 

good  sense  and  good  humor  in  lit- 
erature and  in  life;  without  discover- 
ing that  a  style  with  no  ornament,  a 
style  which  marches  straight  on,  is, 
in  the  right  hands,  a  wonderfully 
effective  style,  and  that  a  book  to  be 
interesting  need  not  leave  the  beaten 
track  of  everyday  life.  Still  again, 
no  girl  with  a  touch  of  the  romantic, 
such  as  every  girl  should  have,  can 
fail  to  be  the  happier  and  the  more 
cultivated  for  knowing  early  and  al- 
ways the  perennial  king  of  English 
romance,  the  author  of  "Quentin 
Durward"  and  "  Ivanhoe."  The 
mere  mention  of  these  three  writ- 
ers— all  so  great,  yet  each  so  differ- 
ent from  either  of  the  others  — 
is  enough  to  make  us  blush  for 
the  hours  and  the  days  that  we 
have  wasted  on  yellow  newspapers 


18    TO  THE  GIRL  WHO  WOULD 

and  yellow  novels  and  trivial  maga- 
zines. 

"But,  "it  may  be  said,  "no  matter 
how  much  education  an  untrained 
girl  would  get  from  such  authors  if 
she  gave  herself  up  to  them,  will 
she — can  she — give  herself  up  to 
them  ?  Can  she  read  them  with  that 
zest  which  alone  will  make  them 
memorable  and  inspiring?"  With  a 
little  courage  at  the  start,  she  can. 
Nothing  about  literature  is  more  re- 
markable or  more  encouraging  than 
the  power  of  the  greatest  literature 
to  reach  all  earnest  human  beings. 
Not  to  speak  of  the  Bible,  Shakspere 
is  read  in  the  chamber  and  heard  on 
the  stage  by  men  and  women  whose 
education  stopped  with  the  gram- 
mar school ;  and  as  to  Homer  we  re- 
member how  the  snowbound  out- 


CULTIVATE  HERSELF  19 

casts  of  Poker  Flat  were  absorbed  in 
the  fate  of  "Ash-heels."  Homer  and 
Shakspere  are  almost  in  a  class  by 
themselves;  yet  other. classics,  not 
so  great,  may  educate  us  and,  while 
educating,  may  delight.  I  know  that 
to  some  minds  the  very  word  classic 
is  cold  and  repellent,  suggesting 
something  which  people  tell  us  we 
ought  to  like  and  which,  in  conse- 
quence, we  like  the  less.  It  is  well 
to  remember  a  helpful  word  of  Pro- 
fessor Barrett  Wendell's,  that  a  classic 
would  not  be  a  classic  if  it  had  not 
interested  thousands  of  human  be- 
ings, and  that  what  has  interested 
thousands  of  human  beings  cannot 
be  without  interest  to  us.  Writing 
of  more  than  transient  interest  —  if 
written  in  good  literary  form  —  be- 
comes in  some  measure  a  classic. 


20    TO  THE  GIRL  WHO  WOULD 

No  classic  will  interest  every  reader ; 
but  every  reader,  with  a  little  experi- 
menting, can  find  some  classic  that 
interests  him.  Having  thus  discov- 
ered among  books  which  have  stood 
the  test  of  time  some  one  that  pleases 
him,  let  him  read  others  by  the  same 
author,  whose  charm  he  has  begun 
to  feel,  and  make  that  author's  work 
a  part  of  himself.  Then  —  so  rapid 
is  the  growth  of  taste  —  he  will  find 
that  trashy  writing  no  longer  meets 
his  needs  ;  he  will  find,  also,  that  a 
second  interesting  classic  writer  is 
easier  to  discover  than  a  first ;  in  time 
he  will  find  that  some  authors  whom 
he  rejected  in  his  early  experiments 
have  become  his  closest  friends. 
And  after  we  have  once  intimately 
known  great  work  and  have  felt  the 
thrill  of  the  growth  that  comes  with 


CULTIVATE  HERSELF  21 

such  a  knowledge,  the  process  of 
cultivation  advances  fast.  With  it 
advances  also,  through  the  influence 
of  wha  t  we  read  and  through  our  un- 
conscious or  half-conscious  absorp- 
tion of  it,  our  accuracy  and  power 
in  the  use  of  our  own  language.  We 
have  begun  to  live  in  the  most  inter- 
esting society —  far  more  interesting 
than  most  of  that  society  which  fre- 
quents the  houses  of  people  whose 
good  fortune  we  envy.  At  small  cost 
we  may  have  on  our  own  table  the 
best  work  of  the  greatest  men  and 
women  of  all  time,  may  think  their 
thoughts,  dream  their  dreams,  see 
their  visions.  All  that  we  need  is  a 
little  staying  power ;  for,  as  some 
one  has  said,  "  every  great  writer 
must  in  some  measure  create  the  at- 
mosphere in  which  he  is  to  be  en- 


22    TO  THE  GIRL  WHO  WOULD 

joyed  "  ;  we  must  give  him  a  little 
time.  I  have  mentioned  Thackeray's 
"Newcomes."  Before  the  opening 
chapter  of  "The  Newcomes"  the 
stoutest  heart  may  quail.  Read  the 
chapter  or  skip  it,  as  you  wish;  but  do 
not  because  of  it  abandon  the  book. 
I  have  said  little  about  poetry ;  yet 
poetry  has,  as  an  educator,  a  certain 
practical  advantage  which  Professor 
Wendell  pointed  out  when  he  ob- 
served that  of  all  the  fine  arts  it  is 
the  most  portable.  You  can  carry  in 
your  pocket  more  fine  art  (for  less 
money)  in  poetry  than  in  anything 
else.  I  said  your  pocket;  I  might 
have  said  your  head.  And  love  of 
poetry  may  be  acquired  by  almost 
all.  Girls  as  a  rule  are  born  with  it 
and  need  only  make  sure  that  it  is 
not  stifled  in  them ;  yet  it  is  a  love 


CULTIVATE  HERSELF  23 

that  every  year  may  be  cultivated 
and  increased.  Most  girls,  with  even 
a  grammar  school  education,  care 
for  Longfellow ;  most  girls  care  for 
Tennyson ;  from  these  they  may  pass 
to  others,  widening  their  apprecia- 
tion every  year  and  every  day.  Ten- 
nyson's "Crossing  the  Bar"  is  no 
more  helpful  —  and  no  more  intel- 
ligible—  than  Browning's  "  Pros- 
pice,"  the  inspirationof  a  man  whom 
most  girls  reject  unread.  Such  works 
as  Professor  Norton's  "Heart  of 
Oak  Books,"  which  bring  together 
the  best  English  poems  for  young 
people  and  introduce  the  reader  to 
many  authors  at  their  best,  are  in- 
valuable as  starting-points.  Indeed 
the  girl  who  really  knows  the  * '  Heart 
of  Oak  Books  "  (prose  and  verse)  has 
no  mean  acquaintance  with  English 


24    TO  THE  GIRL  WHO  WOULD 

literature.  Such  a  girl,  however,  will 
not  stop  with  such  an  acquaintance. 
She  has  tasted  the  delight  of  good 
reading  and  need  no  longer  be  bid- 
den to  the  feast.  She  has  already 
begun  to  commit  to  memory  the 
short  poems  that  she  loves  best  and 
to  learn  how  they  can  transform  what 
once  were  dull  and  waiting  hours. 
Short  poems  for  odd  minutes  —  one 
to  read  for  every  day  in  the  year — 
here  is  a  course  in  culture  which 
nobody  is  too  poor  to  take,  which 
nobody  should  be  too  dull  to  enjoy. 
When  once  a  girl  has  gained  the  love 
of  literature  for  its  own  sake,  such 
a  book  as  Professor  Winchester's 
'  *  Short  Courses  in  English  Read- 
ing," which  names  the  characteristic 
works  of  each  important  period  in 
our  literature,  will  serve  as  an  admir- 


CULTIVATE  HERSELF  25 

able  guide.  Books,  such  as  I  have 
mentioned,  that  bring  the  reader  face 
to  face  with  the  great  authors  them- 
selves, are  vastly  better  than  books 
about  books,  except  as  these  latter 
may  lead  us  to  great  authors  whom 
we  should  otherwise  neglect. 

I  have  barely  mentioned  the  Bible, 
which  few  of  us  read  as  we  should, 
none  of  us  as  we  might,  and  which, 
—  even  apart  from  every  religious 
consideration,  — if  read  little  by  lit- 
tle every  day  with  an  active  mind , 
trains  a  girl's  literary  judgment  as 
it  can  be  trained  by  nothing  else. 
The  effect  of  the  Bible  on  English 
style  may  be  seen  at  its  best  in  the 
work  of  John  Bunyan — otherwise 
almost  illiterate  —  or  of  Abraham 
Lincoln,  into  whose  heart  and  speech 
the  Bible  early  found  its  way.  To 


26    TO  THE  GIRL  WHO  WOULD 

this  book  almost  alone  our  literature 
is  indebted  for  these  self-taught 
and  universally  acknowledged  mas- 
ters. 

I  am  well  aware  that  reading  is 
only  one  means  of  culture.  I  have 
not  forgotten  the  culture  that  comes 
of  intimacy  with  Nature;  and  it  were 
a  nice  question  whether  Emerson 
owed  more  to  his  Plato  or  to  his  pine 
tree.  I  have  not  forgotten  that 

"There 's  no  one  season  such  delight  can  bring 
As  summer,  autumn,  winter,  and  the  spring" 

or  that  love  of  books  is  scarcely  a 
blessing  at  all  if  it  seals  our  eyes 
—  which  it  should  aid  us  in  keeping 
open — to  the  sea,  the  mountains, 
and  the  stars.  I  take  reading  for  what 
it  is  worth  as  one  help  only,  but  one 
which  allies  others  to  itself  even  as 
the  five  talen  ts  may  become  ten .  For 


CULTIVATE  HERSELF  27 

if  the  germ  of  culture  once  gets  into 
the  system,  it  propagates  itself  with 
marvellous  speed.  There  are,  it  is 
true,  individuals  whom  it  affects  in 
one  part  and  not  in  others,  lovers 
of  literature  who  delight  in  vulgar 
vaudeville,  lovers  of  music  who  de- 
vour detective  stories  and  dime  nov- 
els ,  lovers  of  the  pure  and  high  who  by 
contrast  enjoy — or  try  to  think  they 
enjoy  —  sporadic  attacks  of  the  im- 
pure and  low;  but,  in  general,  culture 
in  one  art  leads  to  taste  in  others,  for 
it  refines  the  intellect.  And  though 
she  who  has  cultivated  herself  by 
reading  may  know  little  of  paint- 
ing or  of  music,  she  has  put  herself 
into  that  actively  receptive  condition 
which  will  make  progress,  even  in 
those  arts,  rapid  when  the  opportun- 
ity comes.  She  has  learned  that  the 


28    TO  THE  GIRL  WHO  WOULD 

greatest  minds,  like  the  sun  and  the 
stars,  shine  for  all  who  have  eyes  and 
hearts  to  welcome  their  quickening 
rays.  She  may  be  a  teacher  of  stub- 
born and  stupid  little  children ;  she 
may  write  dull  business  letters  at  the 
dictation  of  vulgar  men ;  she  may  sell 
hairpins  all  day  behind  a  counter;  she 
may  make  eyelets  in  a  shoe  factory ; 
but  when  the  minutes  come  that  are 
her  own,  she  steps  instantly  into  a  life 
from  which  no  drudgery  can  divorce 
her — a  life  the  breath  of  which  in- 
spires her  daily  work,  however  mean, 
with  a  kind  of  glory.  For  the  work  is 
her  discipline,  her  part  in  the  cease- 
less renewal  of  that  great  and  multi- 
farious life  which  we  call  the  world ; 
and  she  can  do  it,  for  she  has  tasted 
the  joy  of  the ' '  unconquerable  soul." 


TO  SCHOOLGIRLS  AT  GRADUATION 


TO  SCHOOLGIRLS  AT 
GRADUATION 

GRADUATION  from  school  —  whether 
the  pupil  is  * '  finished,"  as  we  say  in 
unconscious  irony,  or  sent  to  college 
— is  a  serious  matter.  It  sets  people 
thinking  about  you,  and  sets  you 
thinking  about  yourselves, — or,  ra- 
ther, if  you  are  right-minded,  about 
your  part  in  life.  Nothing  is  more 
rapid  and  tremendous  than  the 
changes  that  will  come  to  many  of 
you  in  the  next  half-dozen  years. 
How  can  this  school  or  any  school 
prepare  you  each  and  all  for  the  mys- 
terious responsibilities,  the  suddenly 
varied  and  diverse  complications  in- 
to which  time  is  sure  to  throw  you? 


32  TO  SCHOOLGIRLS 

*  *  Nothing,"  it  was  said  long  ago,  * '  is 
so  certain  as  the  unexpected."  How 
can  we  get  ready  for  what  we  know 
nothing  about? 

It  is  idle  to  speculate  long  on  some 
things  that  make  a  fascinating  dream 
and  often  a  hard,  though  cherished, 
reality;  but  it  is  idler  to  drift  without 
a  plan,  to  let  the  certainty  of  the  un- 
expected control  your  present  life  or 
leave  it  uncontrolled.  Thus  we  see  the 
answer  to  my  question.  Life  is  diffi- 
cult and  complex;  preparation  for 
life  is  strangely  simple.  Truth  and 
devotion,  that  is  all.  Hold  fast  to 
these  things,  and  leave  the  rest  to 
experience.  You  may  be  green  in 
many  situations;  you  may  and  will 
make  blunders;  in  the  sudden  turns 
of  life  you  may  not  be  flexible 
enough  (few  are);  the  measure  of 


AT  GRADUATION  S3 

your  success  may  depend  on  the 
measure  of  your  intelligence:  but 
you  cannot  utterly  fail. 

You  may  say  that  telling  people 
to  have  truth  and  devotion  is  well 
enough,  but  that,  like  the  clergy- 
man's exhortation  to  follow  Christ, 
it  seems  vague.  Things  come  to  our 
daily  lives  as  concrete  problems;  and 
we  succeed  —  if  we  do  succeed  — 
through  repeated  acts  which  create 
in  us  a  habit  or  a  general  principle. 
Yet  we  need  the  principle  to  direct 
the  acts.  It  is  like  the  old  question, 
' '  Which  came  first,  the  hen  or  the 
egg?" 

Not  quite  so  bad,  after  all.  To  many 
women  —  as  to  some  men  —  devo- 
tion is  instinctive :  to  other  women 
it  is  at  first  a  matter  of  will;  but  when 
they  love,  it  becomes  instinctive ,  as  it 


34  TO  SCHOOLGIRLS 

does,  for  instance,  in  nearly  all  mo- 
thers. And  every  girl  has  some  sense 
of  truth.  To  give  this  sense  staying- 
power,  to  prevent  a  girl  from  losing 
her  head  where  her  feelings  are  con- 
cerned, from  warping  her  reason  by 
emotion  and  saying  any  thing  which 
for  the  moment  seems  to  help  her 
cause,  —  to  give  her,  in  short,  a 
trained  sense  of  truth  and  a  trained 
hold  on  it,  is  one  object  of  such 
education  as  you  have  had.  I  know 
a  school  in  which  intellectual  accu- 
racy is  constantly  brought  to  bear 
on  moral  life,  so  that  even  the  arith- 
metic lesson  helps  the  pupil  to  be 
truthful.  The  simple  cases  every 
girl  understands.  Every  girl,  for  in- 
stance, in  this  school  or  in  any  other, 
knows  that  if  she  copies  a  composi- 
tion from  a  book  or  from  another 


AT  GRADUATION  35 

girl's  work  and  hands  it  in  as  her 
own,  she  is,  for  the  time  being,  false 
to  her  school  and  to  herself.  And 
if  she  thinks  a  minute,  she  cannot 
blame  people  for  not  trusting  her  in 
anything  until  she  has  put  her  life 
on  such  a  basis  as  shall  make  dis- 
honest work  impossible.  Here  is  one 
everyday  opportunity  to  exercise  the 
principles  of  truth  and  devotion  at 
school. 

You  go  out  of  school  into  the 
world  —  all  of  you  in  some  degree, 
and  some  of  you  in  a  high  degree,  to 
be  cultivated  women  — with  a  power 
that  a  few  of  you  are  just  beginning 
to  know.  "  Who  is  it  that  rules  the 
world  ?  "  said  Major  Henry  Lee  Hig- 
ginson. "  Doesn'teverybodyknow," 
he  added,  "that  it  is  women?"  The 
greater  the  power,  the  more  danger- 


36  TO  SCHOOLGIRLS 

ous.  How  shall  you  use  your  power 
wisely  and  justly  ? 

Let  us  begin  with  some  of  the  uses 
that  are  unwise  and  unjust.  One  of 
the  lowest  of  these  is  the  deliberate, 
systematic,  and  indiscriminate  use 
of  personal  fascination — the  use  of 
power  for  the  pleasure  of  exercising 
it  and  for  no  good  end ;  the  use  of 
power  that  unsteadies  men  right  and 
left,  and  .ends  in  an  emptiness  which 
makes  you  scorn  yourselves.  Per- 
sonal charm  is  one  of  the  great  and 
unexplained  gifts  of  heaven.  Some 
people  have  it  all  their  lives  and 
never  know  it;  and  when  they  are 
dead,  after  their  long  and  anxious 
and  self-distrustful  years,  we  wring 
our  very  hearts  because  we  have  not 
told  them.  Yet  had  we  told  them, 
and  had  they  believed  us,  they  might 


AT  GRADUATION  37 

have  lost  it  for  ever.  Indeed,  I  doubt 
whether  we  could  have  made  them 
believe  us;  at  the  most  they  would 
have  feared,  as  Emerson's  lover 
feared  about  the  girl  he  loved,  that 
our  feeling  for  them  had  ' '  died  in 
its  last  expression."  Personal  charm, 
self-recognized  as  part  of  one's  cap- 
'ital,  the  power  to  fascinate  men, 
consciously  used  to  give  zest  to  life, 
becomes  almost  despicable:  at  the 
very  least  it  tends  to  make  a  girl  use- 
less and  leads  her  to  make  men  use- 
less by  distracting  them;  at  the  worst 
it  breaks  homes  and  happiness.  I 
speak  of  something  quite  different 
from  that  desire  to  please  which  is 
born  of  courtesy  and  devotion,  and 
which  brings  at  length  an  honest 
charm  of  its  own  when  the  attrac- 
tion of  the  professionally  charming 


38  TO  SCHOOLGIRLS 

has  lost  its  power  over  all  who 
thoroughly  know  them.  I  have  in 
mind  those  vain  and  foolish  girls  to 
whom  the  homage  of  men  is  the 
glory  of  womanhood.  The  profes- 
sional beauty,  though  she  often  lacks 
personal  charm,  belongs  in  the  same 
category,  and  what  she  pins  her  faith 
to  is  even  more  fleeting.  Whatever 
you  do,  keep  your  souls  white  from 
the  effort  to  fascinate  men. 

Again,  truth  and  devotion  de- 
mand nowadays  that  a  woman  shall 
do  something.  A  year  or  two  of  so- 
cial experience  or  of  travel  may  be 
regarded  as  part  of  an  education ;  but 
there  is  no  excuse  for  people  who 
make  such  things  an  end  in  life,  and 
no  excuse  for  the  mere  time-killer, 
whether  man  or  woman,  whether 
poor  or  rich.  "Mr.  Jones,"  said  a 


AT  GRADUATION  39 

youth  to  a  maiden,  "is  the  most 
wonderful  man  I  ever  saw.  He  knows 
every  card  I  had  at  bridge  a  week 
ago."  "Has  it  ever  occurred  to  you," 
said  the  girl,  "that  he  is  forty-five 
years  old  and  that  he  doesn't  know 
anything  else?"  "  Don't  you  know 
that  girl?"  said  a  gentleman,  as  he 
bowed  to  a  strikingly  handsome  lady. 
"She  wins  more  money  at  bridge 
than  any  other  woman  in  Boston." 
Even  outside  of  the  question  of  gam- 
bling, there  is  something  shocking 
in  that  kind  of  notoriety,  if  only  for 
the  waste  of  time  it  implies.  A  game 
of  cards  (without  gambling)  for  re- 
laxation now  and  then ,  by  all  means; 
but  cards  all  day  and  half  the  night 
and  Sunday  —  can  you  think  of  a  life 
more  arid?  I  remember  a  party  of 
young  men  and  women  (Americans) 


40  TO  SCHOOLGIRLS 

who  were  visiting  Rome,  presuma- 
bly for  the  first  time,  and  who,  after 
a  late  breakfast,  would  settle  in  the 
hotel  parlor  every  day  for  a  whole 
morning  at  cards.  What  business 
had  such  people  in  Rome?  What 
business  had  they  anywhere?  Men 
and  women  are  bound  to  justify  their 
existence.  They  may  give  years  to 
preparation  for  the  work  of  life  (they 
are  fortunate  if  they  can),  but  even 
in  these  preparatory  years  —  even  in 
the  early  years  of  which  an  import- 
ant part  is  play — they  must  show, 
in  their  work  and  in  their  play,  some 
promise  of  truth  and  devotion  or  the 
outlook  is  hard  for  them  and  theirs. 
If  you  are  going  into  society  for 
experience,  cut  out  one  day  a  week 
for  deeper  experience ,  for  some  kind 
of  helpful  work  to  keep  your  soul 


AT  GRADUATION  41 

from  shrinking.  Whenever  you  see 
a  society  girl  of  peculiar  loveliness, 
you  will  find  that  society  has  only  a 
part  of  her  and  not  the  best  part. 
Whatever  you  do,  whether  you  work 
in  the  slums  or  go  to  a  cooking- 
school,  do  something  outside  of 
parties  and  calls  and  afternoon  teas, 
which  are  weak  diet  alike  for  body 
and  mind.  Not  the  least  advantage 
of  a  serious  purpose  is  its  power  to 
choke  affectation.  No  one  self-for- 
getfully  at  work  is  affected  —  unless 
indeed  an  early  affectation  has ' '  set, " 
or  "jelled,"  as  it  were,  in  her  youth 
and  has  thus  become  a  natural  part 
of  herself. 

A  word  here  as  to  college.  When 
I  was  young,  a  girl  who  went  to  col- 
lege was  thought  queer.  Now  a  girl 
who  may  go  and  does  not  is  some- 


42  TO  SCHOOLGIRLS 

times  thought  queerer.  People  who 
know  have  long  since  discovered 
that  the  college  girl  is  quite  as  hu- 
man and  delightful  as  any  other  girl, 
and  likely  to  be  a  better  companion 
through  life.  No  doubt  there  are 
odd  and  unwomanly  college  girls ; 
but  they  are  singularly  few.  Even 
society  "finish,"  for  which  college 
girls  might  seem  to  lack  time  and 
opportunity,  is  often  acquired,  in 
no  small  amount,  at  college.  Those 
of  us  who  have  seen  what  education 
does  for  a  woman,  would  send  to  col- 
lege every  capable  and  healthy  girl 
who  has  the  means  of  going.  Col- 
lege life  gives  us,  or  should  give  us, 
a  larger  way  of  looking  at  things  — 
the  power  of  seeing  the  difference 
between  a  petty  thing  that  to  the 
untrained  and  selfish  mind  seems 


AT  GRADUATION  43 

big,  and  a  little  thing  that  is  lighted 
and  glorified  into  a  big  one  because 
it  is  a  small  outward  sign  of  a  great 
inward  truth.  Take,  for  instance,  a 
matter  in  which  there  are  probably 
more  sinners  among  women  than 
among  men.  I  do  not  say  that  col- 
lege life  eradicates  pettiness,  but  it 
ought  to  get  out  of  any  girl's  head 
the  wrong  kind  of  sensitiveness  and 
put  in  the  right  kind.  By  the  wrong 
kind  I  mean  what  exists  to  a  piti- 
ful extent  among  women  otherwise 
good,  the  kind  that  busies  itself  with 
small  questions  of  precedence.  I  have 
known  women  who  really  cared 
whether  other  women  were  asked  to 
pour  out  tea  oftener  than  they ;  I 
have  known  good  women  arranging 
a  series  of  afternoon  teas  to  think  it 
vital  that  if  Mrs.  X.  were  asked  to 


44  TO  SCHOOLGIRLS 

pour  out  tea,  Mrs.  Y.  should  be  asked, 
and  asked  an  equal  number  of  times 
— even  though  Mrs.  X.  was  infinitely 
better  fitted  than  Mrs.  Y.  for  that 
particular  job.  Such  women,  if  you 
will  pardon  my  saying  it,  cannot 
understand  * '  a  good  manly  view  " 
of  people's  mutual  relations.  It  is 
right  to  take  pains,  even  in  small 
ways,  lest  others'  feelings  shall  be 
hurt;  but  it  is  not  right  to  decide 
everything  or  anything  according  to 
small  jealousies  and  morbid  suspi- 
cions of  indignity.  Among  all  the 
unprofitable  servants  (if  not  wicked 
and  slothful)  few  are  more  unprofit- 
able than  the  people  who  are  always 
on  the  watch  for  a  slight.  There  are 
such  men;  there  are  more  such  wo- 
men than  a  healthy-minded  man 
would  conceive  if  he  were  not 


AT  GRADUATION  45 

brought  face  to  face  with  the  sad 
fact.  "I  don't  see,"  said  a  large- 
hearted  woman,  with  college  train- 
ing, who  constantly  busies  herself 
with  hig  and  real  matters,  "  I  don't 
see  how  people  have  time  for  such 
things  in  so  good  and  busy  a  world." 
I  know  intimately  a  man  who  has 
been  worried  about  nearly  every- 
thing that  could  worry  man  or  wo- 
man ,  but  was  never  worried  because 
he  was  not  invited  to  Mrs.  A.'s  recep- 
tion, or  because  Mrs.  B.  shook  hands 
with  somebody  else  first,  or  because 
Mr.  G.  walked  through  a  doorway 
ahead  of  him,  or  because  Mr.  D.  sat 
at  the  hostess's  right  hand,  or  be- 
cause Mr.  E.  was  asked  to  speak  first 
or  last  (whichever  the  place  of  honor 
may  be)  —  though  he  has  often  been 
worried  because  he  himself  was 


46  TO  SCHOOLGIRLS 

asked  to  speak  at  all.  It  is  a  shock, 
when  we  look  up  to  women,  and 
find  them  squandering  their  strength 
on  things  like  these  —  things  com- 
pared with  which  millinery  becomes 
almost  august.  In  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher's  beautiful  play  "Philaster, 
or  Love  Lies  a-bleeding,"  Euphrasia, 
a  noble  lady,  has,  like  Viola,  taken 
the  guise  of  a  page  to  serve  the  man 
she  loves.  To  this  page,  known  as 
Bellario,  Philaster  says, 

"  Oh,  but  thou  dost  not  know  what 't  is  to  die." 

Bellario.  "Yes,  I  do,  my  lord. 

'T  is  less  than  to  be  born,  a  lasting  sleep, 
A  quiet  resting  from  all  jealousy, 
A  thing  we  all  pursue  ;  I  know  besides 
It  is  but  giving  over  of  a  game 
That  must  be  lost." 

When  we  think  of  the  circumstances, 
the  line * '  A  quiet  resting  from  all  jeal- 
ousy "  becomes  inexpressibly  touch- 


AT  GRADUATION  47 

ing.  Even  by  itself  it  points  to  relief 
from  one  of  the  most  hideous  of  hu- 
man passions,  and  one  to  which,  I 
suspect,  women,  with  some  reason, 
are  more  prone  than  men.  I  think 
of  the  sudden  hardening  of  face 
and  voice  with  which  one  good  wo- 
man speaks  of  another,  the  mean 
little  insinuations  of  women  really 
generous  in  big  things,  the  petty 
spite  between  next-door  neighbors  in 
country  towns,  who  go  on  for  years 
without  speaking  to  each  other, 
though  each  would  rather  talk  than 
do  anything  else  in  the  world.  You 
remember  the  story  of  the  woman 
who,  when  the  census-taker  asked 
her  age,  replied, 

* '  Did  the  woman  next  door  tell 
you  how  old  she  was  ?  " 

"Yes." 


48  TO  SCHOOLGIRLS 

"Well,  I'm  two  years  younger 
than  she  is  1 " 

These  things  may  be  excusable  in 
villages,  but  not  in  the  free,  wide- 
seeing  life  of  an  educated  woman. 
These  are  the  little  things  that  the 
great  truths,  of  which  the  college 
gives  us  glimpses,  force  out  of  sight 
and  mind.  Women  rule  the  world: 
let  them  keep  sweet  and  sound. 

A  kindred  variety  of  sensitiveness, 
in  which  men  have  their  full  share, 
is  the  resentment  that  comes  of  not 
being,  or  seeming  not  to  be  appre- 
ciated. Some  few  persons,  no  doubt, 
are  not  appreciated;  but  they  are  not 
the  persons  who  should  call  atten- 
tion to  the  fact,  except  by  their  steady 
patience  and  devotion.  A  healthy 
human  being  learns  to  pocket  griev- 
ances, to  burn  his  own  smoke  as  the 


AT  GRADUATION  49 

saying  is,  to  waste  no  energy  in  tak- 
ing offence,  to  remember  that  since 
he  does  not  like  everybody,  he  can- 
not expect  everybody  to  like  him.  He 
learns  to  bear  and  forbear,  and,  best 
of  all,  to  fix  his  mind  not  on  small 
disturbances  but  on  his  work,  "  with 
malice  to  ward  none,  with  charity  for 
all." 

Thedangers  at  which  I  have  hinted 
are  closely  related  to  that  very  sen- 
sitiveness which  gives  girls  and  wo- 
men their  peculiar  power.  One  of 
the  best  things  in  the  world  is  the 
ability  to  put  yourself  into  another's 
place  —  a  power  granted  to  the  sen- 
sitive only,  and  hence  to  women 
rather  than  to  men.  Quickness  to 
feel  atmospheric  cross  currents  in  so- 
cial life,  instantaneous  and  practical 
sympathy  with  grief,  reckless  de- 


50  TO  SCHOOLGIRLS 

votion  beside  the  sick  bed  —  these 
things  belong  to  those  who  suffer  in- 
deed, but  suffer  to  noble  ends.  It  is 
these  things  that  show  women  to  be 
of  finer  clay  than  men .  It  is  these 
things,  containing  the  very  essence 
of  woman's  power,  of  which  some 
women  are  doing  their  best  to  rid 
themselves  and  their  sex.  The  rest- 
lessly agitating  woman  in  public  life 
and  her  near  relative,  the  nagging 
woman  in  private  life,  may  have  a 
kind  of  truth  and  a  kind  of  devo- 
tion, but  not  the  sense  of  things 
in  their  true  relation  and  not  the 
vision  of  the  strength  of  gentleness. 
Rather  she  to  whom  the  old  poet 
said :  — 

"  You  for  whose  body  God  made  better  clay 
Or  took  soul's  stuff  such  as  shall  late  decay 
Or  such  as  needs  small  change  at  the  last  day. 


AT  GRADUATION  51 

•This,  as  an  amber  drop  enwraps  a  bee, 
Covering  discovers  your  quick  soul  that  we 
May  in  your  through-shine  front  your  heart's 
thoughts  see." 

A  good  school  and  a  good  college 
after  it  fill  a  girl's  mind  with  the 
greater  issues  of  life.  She  has  "  no 
time  in  so  good  and  busy  a  world  " 
—  a  world  that  needs  workers  —  to 
waste  in  coquetry  or  triviality  or 
jealousy  or  vain  regret  that  another's 
opportunity  and  charm  are  not  hers. 
She  sees  on  every  hand  what  needs 
to  be  done,  and  like  the  prophet  of 
old,  she  cries:  "Here  am  I,  send 
me";  and  behold,  men  look  upon 
her  face  as  it  had  been  the  face  of  an 
angel,  for  her  vision  is  the  vision  of 
the  pure  in  heart. 

Is  it  a  low  view  of  a  woman's  life 
to  believe  that  her  leadership  is  not 
like  a  man's,  that  nature  gives  men 


52  TO  SCHOOLGIRLS 

one  kind  of  power  over  the  world 
and  women  another,  that  in  politi- 
cal competition  women  are  as  much 
at  a  disadvantage  as  men  are  in  the 
finer  sympathies  and  graces  of  life? 
* '  I  never  could  see,"  said  my  mother, 
"  why  women  should  want  to  vote; 
but  if  they  do  want  to  vote,  I  can't 
see  what  right  men  have  to  say  they 
shan't"  —  a  remark  that  has  given 
me  food  for  reflection.  I  too  find 
it  hard  to  see  by  what  right  the  bal- 
lot is  denied  to  women;  yet  with 
direct  political  responsibility  comes 
much  that  would  tend  to  weaken 
or  destroy  the  power  by  which  they 
rule  the  world  to-day. 

"  To  women ,"  said  President  Eliot , 
' '  we  owe  the  charm  and  the  beauty 
of  life  " — and  some  women  were  of- 
fended at  his  saying  it.  It  seemed  like 


AT  GRADUATION  53 

the  old  notion  that  women  are  purely 
ornamentalandsecondary ;  itseemed 
a  low  view  of  them  and  their  destiny. 
Yet,  if  I  understand  it,  it  is  not  only 
profoundly  true,  but  a  recognition 
of  what  is  highest  in  women  as  what 
is  highest  in  all  human  creatures  — 
the  power  of  transfiguring  this  daily 
drudging  life  of  ours  with  the  ra- 
diance that  Browning  had  seen 
when  he  wrote : 

"The  white  I  saw  shine  through  her  was  her 
soul's," 

the  radiance  that  makes  the  young 
mother's  face  a  '  *  through-shine  " 
face,  the  radiance  that  shone  in  and 
through  Emerson  when  he  wrote : 

••  Let  me  go  where'er  I  will 
I  hear  a  sky-born  music  still: 
It  sounds  from  all  things  old, 
It  sounds  from  all  things  young, 


54  TO  SCHOOLGIRLS 

From  all  that's  fair,  from  all  that's  foul, 
Peals  out  a  cheerful  song. 
It  is  not  only  in  the  rose, 
It  is  not  only  in  the  bird, 
Not  only  where  the  rainbow  glows, 
Nor  in  the  song  of  woman  heard, 
But  in  the  darkest,  meanest  things 
There  alway,  alway  something  sings. 
'Tis  not  in  the  high  stars  alone. 
Nor  in  the  cups  of  budding  flowers, 
Nor  in  the  red-breast's  mellow  tone, 
Nor  in  the  bow  that  smiles  in  showers, 
But  in  the  mud  and  scum  of  things 
There  alway,  alway  something  sings." 

Emerson  indeed  was  one  of  the  few 
men  who,  still  manly,  felt  and  made 
others  feel,  with  the  intuitive  refine- 
ment of  a  woman,  '«  the  charm  and 
the  beauty  of  life  "  ;  because  he  was 
high-minded  and  clean-hear  ted,  be- 
cause he  spiritualized  everything, 
because  his  eyes  were  purged  of  the 
earthy,  because  he  saw.  There  are 
women,  even  yoimg  girls,  in  whose 


AT  GRADUATION  55 

presence  it  is  impossible  to  dwell  on 
a  low  thought,  to  live  on  any  level 
but  the  highest,  — women  who  are  a 
kind  of  revelation  of  heaven : 

"  She  never  found  fault  with  you,  never  implied 
Your  wrong  by  her  right ;  and  yet  men  at  her  side 
Grew  nobler,  girls  purer,  as  through  the  whole  town 
The  children  were  gladder  thatpulled  at  hergown." 

There  are  such  women  that  when 
their  friends  or  their  husbands  or 
their  children  think  evil  or  are 
tempted  in  business  or  in  social  life 
one  hair's  breadth  from  what  is  true, 
the  thought  of  them  shall  make  it 
harder  to  do  wrong  than  to  do  right. 
These  are  the  women  to  whom  we 
owe  ' '  the  charm  and  the  beauty  of 
life." 

Not  the  least  part  of  every  girl's 
mission  is  to  keep  undefiled  the 
spring  of  poetry  in  her  heart,  to  live 


56  TO  SCHOOLGIRLS 

above  the  vulgarity  that,  like  vice, 
we  first  endure,  then  pity,  then  em- 
brace, to  remember  that  the  poetry- 
killer  is  an  enemy  to  his  people.  I 
know  that  much  which  passes  for 
poetry  is  weak  and  immoral;  but  the 
poetry  that  I  mean  is  what  keeps  us 
reverent  and  humble,  brings  us  into 
instantaneous  contact  with  the  greatr 
est  things,  rolls  the  mist  away  from 
the  mountain  peak  :  — 

"The'shepherds  moved 

Through  the  dull  mist,  I  following,  when  a  step, 
A  single  step  that  freed  me  from  the  skirts 
Of  the  blind  vapour,  opened  to  my  view 
Glory  beyond  all  glory  ever  seen 
By  waking  sense  or  by  the  dreaming  soul." 

It  is  ill  for  the  nation  that  loses  its 
poetic  fervor.  Yet  with  twelve  pages 
of  illustrated  "journalism"  every 
week-day  and  a  hundred  and  twenty 
every  Sunday,  with  Bull  Durham  and 


AT  GRADUATION  57 

Mr.  Mennen  staring  at  us  across  the 
green  fields,  with  what  is  called  opera 
vulgarized  by  such  things  as  we  see 
depicted  in  street  posters,  and  what 
is  called  comedy  made  up  of  the  ad- 
ventures of  faithless  husbands  and 
jealous  wives,  with  the  portraits  of 
all  the  divorced  people  in  real  life 
and  the  details  of  their  cases  thrust 
under  our  eyes  every  day,  it  is  only 
human  to  run  down.  And,  as  our 
population  increases,  it  becomes 
harder  and  harder  to  free  ourselves 
from  the  network  of  wires  through 
which  we  lift  our  eyes  to  the  sky- 
scrapers that  shut  out  the  eternal 
hills.  Some  years  ago  an  old  lady  in 
Salem,  Massachusetts,  complained 
at  the  City  Hall  of  the  electric  wires. 

"Do  they  hurt  your  house?" 
"No." 


68  TO  SCHOOLGIRLS 

*  *  Do  they  damage  your  trees  ?  " 

-No." 

' '  What  is  the  matter,  then  ?  " 

"Well,  when  Harriet  and  I  sit  out 
on  the  piazza,  we  don't  want  to  look 
at  God's  heaven  through  a  grid- 


iron.' 


That  is  what  those  of  us  who  dwell 
in  cities  are  doing  physically;  and 
after  doing  it  long  physically  we  do 
it  spiritually  unless  we  take  care. 
Some  people  who  think  they  love  the 
woods  and  the  sea  no  sooner  get  to 
what  they  think  they  love  than  they 
vulgarize  it.  The  sea-shore,  indeed, 
where  it  is  not  private  property,  be- 
comes a  place  for  clam-bakes,  loop- 
ing the  loop,  and  unconcealed  love- 
making. 

Now  there  are  two  ways  of  holding 
fast  to  poetry  under  present  condi- 
tions, and  neither  is  quite  complete 


AT  GRADUATION  59 

in  itself.  One  is  by  looking  beyond 
the  scroll-saw  shanties  with  sign- 
boards on  them ,  beyond  the  strutting 
youth  with  his  hand  thrust  into  the 
arm  of  that  awful  girl  in  yellow  and 
black  with  pink  ribbons,  out  on  the 
everlasting  sea;  and  this  we  must 
learn  to  do  now  and  then  if  we  would, 
as  it  were,  keep  our  peace  with  God: 
and  as  women  are  more  sensitive 
than  men,  so  do  they,  in  the  drudg- 
ery of  daily  life,  stand  more  in  need 
of  a  breath  from  the  boundless  ocean 
or  the  eternal  hills  :  — 

"You  and  I  and  the  hills  1 

Do  you  think  we  could  live  for  a  day, 
With  the  useless,  wearying  wrongs  and  ills 

And  the  cherished  cares  away  ? 
Rebels  of  progress  and  our  clay — 
Do  you  think  we  could  live  for  a  day  ? 

"You  and  I  and  the  dawn, 

With  the  great  light  breaking  through, 


60  TO  SCHOOLGIRLS 

And  the  woods  astir  with  a  wakened  fawn, 

And  our  own  hearts  wakened,  too; 
With  the  bud  in  the  hollow,  the  bird  on  the  spray. 
Do  you  think  we  could  live  for  a  day  ? 

"You  and  I  and  the  dusk, 

With  the  first  stars  in  the  glow  — 
And  the  faith  that  our  ills  are  but  the  husk 

With  the  kernel  of  life  below ; 
With  the  joy  of  the  hills  and  the  throb  of  the  May, 
Do  you  think  we  could  live  for  a  day  ? " 

The  other  way  I  have  hinted 'at 
already  by  quoting  Emerson's  song 
about  the  something  that  sings.  It 
was  tried  by  Walt  Whitman,  who 
sometimes,  instead  of  making  com- 
mon things  poetic,  degraded  poetry. 
It  has  been  tried,  with  much  success 
here  and  there,  by  Mr.  Kipling  —  in 
"McAndrew's  Hymn,"  for  example, 
in  "  The  Song  of  the  Banjo,"  in  the 
-King,"  — 

"All  unseen 
Romance  brought  up  the  nine-fifteen." 


AT  GRADUATION  61 

It  was  used  long  ago  without  try- 
ing by  Homer.  What  is  less  poetic 
than  dirty  clothes  ?  Yet  in  the  most 
tremendous  part  of  the  Iliad,  when 
Achilles  is  hotly  pursuing  Hector 
round  the  walls  of  Troy,  Homer  in- 
troduces dirty  clothes  with  a  touch  so 
sure  that,  even  in  the  prose  transla- 
tion, they  do  not  lessen  the  poetry 
but  add  to  it :  — 

'  *  Past  the  watch-tower,  past  the 
wild  fig-tree  beaten  by  the  wind, 
ever  out  from  the  wall,  over  the 
wagon  path,  they  rushed  to  where 
two  springs  shoot  upward  from  ed- 
dying Scamander.  One  with  warm 
waters  flows,  and  round  about 
smoke  rises  from  it  as  of  flaming  fire. 
The  other  even  in  summer  hath  a 
stream  like  hail  or  chilling  snow  or 
water  turned  to  ice.  And  there  hard 
by  upon  the  banks  are  washing 
troughs,  wide,  of  splendid  stone- 
work; and  there  the  Trojan  wives 


62  TO  SCHOOLGIRLS 

and  daughters  fair  would  wash  their 
shining  robes  in  early  days  of  peace 
before  the  sonsof  the  Achaians  came. 
Past  these  they  swept." 

Go  back  to  the  sources.  Lose  no 
opportunity  of  contact  with  greater 
nature  and  greater  art — with  woods 
and  mountains  and  ocean,  with  the 
masters  of  music  and  painting  and 
poetry.  Begin  the  Iliad  or  the  In- 
ferno, even  with  grammar  and  lexi- 
con, and  you  know  instantly  that 
you  are  in  the  presence  of  one  of  the 
greatest  things  in  the  world.  To  you 
the  treasures  of  time  are  open;  let 
them  not  be  open  in  vain.  Do  not 
adopt  a  scheme  or  drift  into  a  habit 
of  life  which  will  not  suffer  you  to 
touch  the  hem  of  the  garment  that 
shall  make  you  whole.  What  you 
get  from  pure  religion  and  undefiled 


AT  GRADUATION  63 

(not  fashionable  and  perfunctory), 
from  the  mountains  and  the  ocean, 
from  the  highest  poetry,  works  in 
you  and  through  you  in  ways  that 
no  man  understands,  and  makes 
you  see  and  lead  others  to  see  the 
glory  that  lies  in  and  about  our 
lives  —  a  glory  without  the  vision  of 
which  we  "sit  in  darkness,  being 
bound  in  affliction  and  iron." 

In  your  poetry  I  include  your 
dreams  and  your  reveries.  I  remem- 
ber my  dejection  when  a  gaunt  phi- 
losopher whose  college  lectures  I 
attended,  told  his  class  of  vigorous 
boys  that  a  reverie  is ' '  the  wors  t  kind 
of  mental  dissipation."  In  my  heart 
I  rebelled;  but  I  dared  not  then  say 
that  he  was  wrong,  and  he  would 
have  made  short  work  of  me  if  I  had 
done  so.  The  mere  dreamer  is  likely 


64  TO  SCHOOLGIRLS 

to  be  of  little  use,  I  grant,  though 
even  he  may  be  a  poet  in  the  chrysa- 
lis; but  deliver  me  from  the  man  or 
woman  who  never  dreams,  the  be- 
ing to  whom,  as  Ruskin  says,  "the 
primrose  is  very  accurately  the  prim- 
rose because  he  does  not  love  it.'* 
"Paley  is  a  good  scholar,"  said  an 
English  schoolmaster  of  the  famous 
editor  of  ^Eschylus, '  *  but  he  will  use 
such  a  word  as  '  irreclaimably '  in 
translating  a  Greek  tragic  chorus." 
Can  such  a  man  really  know  anything 
of  Greek  poetry  ?  Poetry  is  so  evasive 
and  volatile  that  often,  if  we  turn  a 
poem  word  for  word  into  another 
language,  the  poetry  has  gone ;  the 
spirit  has  refused  to  change  its  house . 
Much  of  our  poetry  comes  to  us  in 
these  very  reveries;  "for  dreams 
also,"  said  Plato,  "are  from  God." 


AT  GRADUATION  65 

This  is  another  way  of  saying,  do 
not  be  afraid  of  being  romantic.  So 
long  as  you  have  principles  to  keep 
you  from  seeing  romance  in  bad 
things  — such  as  the  life  of  fast  men 
—  and  humor  to  keep  you  from 
sentimental  folly,  be  romantic  if  you 
will,  and  be  the  better  for  it.  Next 
to  strong  faith  there  is  nothing  that 
will  help  you  through  the  tight 
places  like  romance  and  humor.  En- 
thusiasm is  your  right  and  your 
glory  by  reason  of  your  youth.  Cher- 
ish it,  and  if  it  leads  you  to  a  foolish 
blunder  now  and  then,  save  yourself 
by  humor :  — 

"On  fire  that  glows 
With  heat  intense 
I  turn  the  hose 
Of  common  sense, 
And  out  it  goes 
At  small  expense. 


66  TO  SCHOOLGIRLS 

It  is  romance  that  discovers  new 
worlds  and  new  stars  —  science,  if 
you  will,  but  romance  in  science.  It 
is  romance  in  one  life  that  kindles 
another  life  to  brave  deeds  and  de- 
voted service.  Your  romance,  there- 
fore, is  part  of  your  high  efficiency. 
People  try  sometimes  tostrip  science 
and  literature  and  history  of  ro- 
mance ;  but  their  science  repels,  their 
literature  irritates  and  stupefies:  as 
for  their  history,  in  the  words  of  Mr. 
Justice  Holmes,  "After  history  has 
done  its  best  to  fix  men's  thoughts 
upon  strategy  and  finance,  their 
eyes  have  turned  and  rested  on  some 
single  romantic  figure,  —  some  Sid- 
ney, some  Montcalm,  some  Shaw." 
Build  your  air-castles,  and  when  you 
find  yourself  ceasing  to  build  them, 
throw  yourself  into  some  great  work 


AT  GRADUATION  67 

that  shall  rouse  you  to  build  more. 
Into  them  goes,  and  out  of  them 
comes  again  threefold  the  buoyancy 
of  your  life.  * '  I  know, "  says  Emer- 
son, "how  easy  it  is  to  sneer  at  your 
sanguine  youth  and  its  glittering 
dreams.  But  I  find  the  gayest  castles 
in  the  air  that  were  ever  piled  far 
better  for  comfort  and  for  use  than 
the  dungeons  in  the  air  that  are  daily 
dug  and  carved  out  by  grumbling, 
discontented  people." 

It  seems  strange  to  tell  young  girls 
with  every  appearance  of  health  and 
happiness  that  one  of  the  hardest 
problems  of  life  is  to  keep  cheerful ; 
but  I  dare  say  some  of  you  know  it 
already.  I  remember  an  old  New 
Englander  who  unconsciously  re- 
vealed his  theory  of  life  in  his  salu- 
tation, which  was  not  * '  How  do  you 


68  TO  SCHOOLGIRLS 

do?"  but  "How  do  you  stan'  it?" 
No  matter  how  free  our  animal 
spirits,  how  spontaneous  our  fun, 
how  delightful  our  friends,  we  are 
compassed  about  by  all  sorts  of  sin 
and  sorrow  (as  any  newspaper  will 
show  us  in  one  minute)  as  well  as 
by  the  awful  mystery  of  life  and 
death.  Sometimes  our  despondency 
has  a  prosaic  cause,  such  as  hunger  ^ 
which,  though  it  shows  how  the 
mind  may  be  a  slave  to  the  body,  is 
not  lasting.  Oftener  depression  is 
the  reaction  from  what  few,  young 
or  old,  can  resist  in  so  busy  and 
complicated  a  world, — the  effort  to 
carry  a  great  deal  more  than  our 
bodies  and  minds  can  stand  up  un- 
der. It  is  depression  of  the  nervous 
system,  which  system  we  have  dis- 
regarded in  our  plans.  Do  not  forget 


AT  GRADUATION  69 

that  the  better  and  the  harder  you 
have  worked,  the  stronger  is  the  re- 
action, the  deeper  the  depression, 
the  more  nearly  ineradicable  the 
notion  that  you  have  failed.  Keep, 
if  you  can,  a  steady  hand  on  yourself, 
and  do  not  be  misled  into  a  life  that 
will  take  all  the  rebound  out  of  your 
system  while  you  are  still  in  your 
girlhood;  since  nothing,  not  even 
training,  can  quite  make  up  for  the 
elastic  strength  of  youth  when  mind 
and  body  rejoice  in  their  own  activ- 
ity, and  when  work  at  conscious 
high  pressure,  or  at  conscious  low 
pressure,  is  unknown. 

Yet  out  of  that  same  nervous  sen- 
sitiveness which  uncontrolled  brings 
its  days  of  depression  may  come  an 
exquisite  joy.  When  my  old  teacher, 
Doctor  William  Everett,  declared 


70  TO  SCHOOLGIRLS 

that  Sparta  had  no  great  men,  I  ven- 
tured to  name  Leonidas.  "Leoni- 
das!"  he  exclaimed.  "  Nothing  but 
bull-dog  about  him."  Whether  he 
was  right  or  wrong  as  to  Leonidas,  I 
do  not  know;  but  he  had  in  mind  the 
general  truth  that  a  man  may  be 
brave  in  proportion  to  his  sensitive- 
ness. It  follows  that  a  woman,  be- 
yond all,  may  know  the  triumphant 
ecstasy  of  courage. 

My  friend  Professor  Barrett  Wen- 
dell, after  making  a  speech  at  a  girls' 
college,  came  back  low  in  his  mind. 
"It  was  bad,"  he  said.  "Why?"  I 
asked.  "Was  n't  it  true?"  "Yes,"  he 
answered,  "that  was  the  trouble  with 
it."  So  it  must  always  seem  to  the 
preacher  of  old  doctrines .  Yet  old  as 
are  the  doctrines  and  the  experiences 
of  which  I  speak,  to  you  of  the  grad- 


AT  GRADUATION  71 

uating  class  the  experiences  must  in 
part  be  new.  There  are  few  groups 
of  human  beings  more  interesting 
than  a  class  of  schoolgirls  going  out 
into  the  new  world  of  college  or  of 
society.  There  are  few  hearts  of  men 
or  women  that  do  not  yearn  toward 
them,  longing  to  help  them  with  that 
experience  which  they  would  prob- 
ably reject  and  to  which,  after  all, 
there  is  no  royal  road.  No  one  can 
speak  to  you  and  forget  that  you  are 
to  rule  the  next  generation;  that  to 
you  your  lovers,  your  husbands,  your 
children  will  look  for  the  best  part  of 
what  makes  life  beautiful  and  true. 
You  stand  together  for  the  last  time. 
Is  there  no  word  that  is  yours  and 
yours  only  —  nothing  but  the  old 
exhortation  to  the  old  virtues?  No, 
there  is  no  thing  but  this:  Speak  the 


72  TO  SCHOOLGIRLS 

truth,  do  your  work,  and  see  the 
glory  of  it  all.  Donotjointhebandof 
those  who  chafe  without  what  they 
call  "large  opportunities,"  but  do 
your  work  in  such  a  spirit  as  shall 
make  larger  the  opportunities  you 
have .  * '  You  picture  to  yourself,  "says 
Phillips  Brooks, ' '  the  beauty  of  brav- 
ery and  steadfastness.  And  then 
some  wretched  little  disagreeable 
duty  comes  which  is  your  martyr- 
dom, the  lamp  for  your  oil;  and  if 
you  do  not  doit,  your  oil  is  spilled." 
Remember  that 

"Hye  god  som  tyme  senden  can 
His  grace  in-to  a  litel  ores  stalle." 

Do  your  work  with  that  love  which  is 
the  quintessenceofyourwomanhood 
—  not  just  your  work  and  no  more, 
but  a  little  more  for  the  lavishing' s 
sake,  that  li ttle  more  which  is  worth 


AT  GRADUATION  73 

all  the  rest,  for  it  "discovers  your 
quick  soul."  Shake  off  the  petty 
meannesses  that  beset  a  sensitive 
heart:  work  greatly,  love  greatly. 

And  if  you  suffer  as  you  must,  and 
if  you  doubt  as  you  may,  do  your 
work.  Put  your  heart  into  it,  and 
the  sky  will  clear.  Then  out  of  your 
very  doubt  and  suffering  shall  be 
born  the  supreme  joy  of  life :  and 
whether  you  know  it  or  not,  there 
will  be  those  who  when  everything 
seems  to  close  black  about  them 
will  yet  say  to  themselves, 

"God's  in  his  heaven. 
All's  right  with  the,world," 

for  I  have  seen  Him  in  her  face. 


TO  COLLEGE  GIRLS 


TO  COLLEGE  GIRLS 

IT  is  more  than  forty  years  since 
the  girls'  college  appeared  in  Amer- 
ica. Contrary  to  prophecy,  some 
women  who  went  to  it  remained 
women  still ;  hence  the  girls'  college 
girl  of  the  second  generation, — who 
is  now  well  under  way.  We  have 
thus  begun  to  test  the  staying  power 
of  the  educated  woman — in  body, 
in  mind,  and  in  womanliness. 

Some  fifty  years  ago  Dr.  Holmes, 
after  dwelling  on  the  vulgarities  of 
girls'  * '  finishing"  schools, remarked, 
"  And  yet  these  schools,  with  their 
provincial  French  and  their  mechan- 
ical accomplishments,  with  their 
cheap  parade  of  diplomas  and  Com- 
mencements, and  other  public  hon- 


78  TO  COLLEGE  GIRLS 

ors,  have  an  ever  fresh  interest  to 
all  who  see  the  task  they  are  per- 
forming in  our  new  social  order. 
These  girls  are  not  being  educated 
for  governesses,  or  to  be  exported 
with  other  manufactured  articles. 
.  .  .  Most  of  them  will  be  wives,  and 
every  American  husband  is  a  pos- 
sible President  of  the  United  States. 
Any  one  of  these  girls  may  be  a  four 
years'  queen.  There  is  no  sphere  of 
human  activity  so  exalted  that  she 
may  not  be  called  upon  to  fill  it." 

' '  But, "  he  adds, ' '  there  is  another 
consideration  of  far  higher  interest. 
The  education  of  our  community  to 
all  that  is  beautiful  is  flowing  in 
mainly  through  its  women,  and  that 
to  a  considerable  extent  by  the  aid  of 
these  large  establishments,  the  least 
perfect  of  which  do  something  to 


TO  COLLEGE  GIRLS  79 

stimulate  the  higher  tastes  and  par- 
tially instruct  them.  Sometimes 
there  is  perhaps  reason  to  fear  that 
girls  will  be  too  highly  educated  for 
their  own  happiness,  if  they  are  lifted 
by  their  culture  out  of  the  range  of 
the  practical  and  everyday  working 
youth  by  whom  they  are  surrounded. 
But  this  is  a  risk  we  must  take.  Our 
young  men  come  into  active  life  so 
early  that,  if  our  girls  were  not  edu- 
cated to  something  beyond  mere 
practical  duties,  our  material  pro- 
sperity would  outstrip  our  culture,  as 
it  often  does  in  places  where  money 
is  made  too  rapidly.  This  is  the  mean- 
ing, therefore,  of  that  some  what  am- 
bitious programme  common  to  most 
of  these  large  institutions,  at  which 
we  sometimes  smile,  perhaps  curi- 
ously or  uncharitably." 


80  TO  COLLEGE  GIRLS 

What  I  have  cited  gives,!  suspect, 
a  pretty  fair  notion  of  the  ordinary 
academic  training  for  girls  in  the 
middle  of  the  nineteenth  century  — 
a  sort  of  bluff  at  literary  and  artistic 
culture,  together  with  something 
popularly  believed  to  be  French. 
Even  such  an  education  gave  access 
to  great  works  of  literature ;  and  this 
to  a  girl  of  natural  refinement  was 
much.  A  vulgar  girl  gets  her  Shak- 
spere  and  Milton  from  her  teacher ; 
and  if  he  is  not  an  interpreter  but 
a  mere  middleman,  she  is  about  as 
well  off  before  reading  them  as  after. 
A  girl  of  finer  and  higher  power  may 
be  led  to  Shakspere  and  Milton  by 
the  veriest  charlatan;  but  once  led 
to  them,  she  makes  them  her  own. 
Out  of  those  crude  academies  came 
women  of  a  sensitive,  though  nar- 


TO  COLLEGE  GIRLS  81 

row,  culture  that  the  academies 
themselves  could  not  understand  — 
such  women  as  to-day  go  to  college 
if  they  can  and,  at  any  sacrifice,  send 
their  daughters. 

Dr.  Holmes,  we  remember,  feared 
that  even  the  old  academy  might 
make  a  girl  intellectually  too  exact- 
ing for  the  young  men  of  her  own 
circle  who  came  early  into  active 
life ;  and  to-day  the  girls'  college  is 
charged  with  the  same  offence.  That 
has  not  been  the  danger  to  girls  in 
the  relative  education  of  the  sexes. 
A  boy  and  girl  have  grown  up  to- 
gether, have,  in  the  country  phrase, 
"gone  together"  for  years,  have 
learned  to  love  each  other,  and  have 
told  each  other  what  they  have 
learned.  The  boy,  quick  at  study 
and  ambitious,  has  been  sent  to 


32  TO  COLLEGE  GIRLS 

college ;  the  girl  has  stayed  at  home 
and  waited  for  him.  The  boy  has 
outgrown  the  girl.  It  is  partly  his 
selfishness,  but  chiefly  the  inevitable 
need,  with  his  newly  opened  mind, 
of  a  companion  with  intellectual 
interests  and  intellectual  training. 
More  and  more  he  feels  her  rusticity 
and  makes  her  feel  it.  Then  comes 
the  tragedy  of  the  higher  education, 
but  it  is  not  the  tragedy  of  the  higher 
education  of  women.  In  these  days 
when  more  and  more  of  our  country 
boys  go  to  college,  there  would  be 
more  such  tragedies  if  our  girls'  col- 
leges throughout  the  land  were  not 
fitting  girls  for  a  life — married  or 
single — with  resources  of  which  half 
a  century  ago  girls  never  dreamed. 
Now,  when  the  boy  goes  to  college, 
the  girl  goes  too.  Now,  instead  of 


TO  COLLEGE  GIRLS  83 

defending  such  culture  as  strays  into 
pretentious  school  programmes,  we 
find  ourselves  wedging  our  curricu- 
lum with  "domestic  science,"  lest 
the  ideal  crowd  out  the  practical 
and  the  girl  forget  she  is  a  girl. 

College  life,  in  its  effect  on  a  girl's 
mind,  has  not  justified  the  sceptic's 
fears.  College  girls  break  down,  it  is 
true;  yet  no  sensible  girl,  with  good 
secondary  training,  breaks  down 
from  over-study.  There  are  fanatics 
in  study,  whom  neither  advice  nor 
command  can  restrain;  who,  like 
Milton,  could  not  listen  to  the  phy- 
sician, not  though  he  were  yEscula- 
pius  himself;  who,  like  Milton,  are 
ready  to  grow  deliberately  blind  for 
what  they  conceive  to  be  a  good 
cause.  "One  must  have  dyspepsia," 
said  a  woman  with  a  wild  passion 


84  TO  COLLEGE  GIRLS 

for  learning —  "One  must  have  dys- 
pepsia, or  be  a  clod."  There  are  girls 
(and  boys)  who  break  down  because 
they  persist  in  doing  intellectual 
work  underfed.  "We  must  all  learn 
self-control,"  says  Major  Henry  Lee 
Higginson.  "One  man  loves  rum; 
another,  work."  There  are  more  girls 
who  break  down  because  they  lack 
the  sense  to  see  that  they  cannot  at 
the  same  time  lead  a  life  actively  in- 
tellectual and  a  life  actively  social. 
Overwork  at  college  is  quite  differ- 
ent from  overwork  in  college  studies, 
with  which  it  is  often  confounded. 
Commonly  it  is  caused  by  theatricals, 
dances,  music,  athletics,  making 
(and  eating)  fudge,  —  in  short  by 
all  the  manifold  secondary  things 
which,  with  human  perversity,  we 
insist  on  treating  as  primary.  These 


TO  COLLEGE  GIRLS  85 

things  are  in  themselves  good  —  ex- 
cept perhaps  the  fudge,  which  I  have 
added  to  my  list  at  the  suggestion  of  a 
true  and  certainly  a  tried  college  offi- 
cer; but  they  are  not  good  unless  they 
know  their  place  and  stay  there. 
Why  so  many  of  us  put  second  things 
first  and  first  things  second  or  third 
I  leave  for  psychologists  to  explain. 
A  boy  does  it  with  less  danger  to  his 
health,  because  a  boy,  as  a  rule,  can 
shed,  or  benumb,  or  hypnotize  his 
conscience;  but  woe  to  the  girl — 
woe  sooner  or  later — whose  con- 
science is  strong  enough  to  make 
her  study,  yet  not  strong  enough  to 
keep  her  from  what  unfits  her  for 
study.  When  all  is  said,  I  believe  that 
there  is  more  nervous  prostration  in 
* 'society"  than  in  college,  and  that 
the  disease  is  especially  virulent 


86  TO  COLLEGE  GIRLS 

among  those  women  whose  chief 
business  is  to  kill  time.  In  "society" 
there  is  also,  from  the  college  girl's 
point  of  view,  a  pathetic  want  of 
intellectual  life. 

The  effect  of  college  training  on  a 
girl's  mind  is  promptly  visible  and 
nearly  always  delightful.  Now  and 
then  you  see  a  girl  —  or  a  girls' 
college  —  whose  culture  is  mixed 
with  an  affectation  both  amusing 
and  sad ;  but  in  affectation  the  soci- 
ety girl  is  sunk  far  deeper  and  with 
less  hope  of  emerging.  Nor  does  the 
college  woman  put  on  airs  more  in- 
sufferably than  the  college  man,  the 
youth  with  what  Thackeray  calls 
* '  that  indescribable  genteel  simper 
which  is  only  to  be  learned  at  the 
knees  of  Alma  Mater."  Affectation 
is  something  to  which,  in  either  sex 


TO  COLLEGE  GIRLS  Si 

and  in  every  sphere,  light  weights 
take  kindly.  College  professors, 
social  leaders,  salesmen,  milliners, 
brakemen  in  railway  trains  —  all  of 
us  unless  we  watch  ourselves ;  still 
more  if  we  watch  ourselves —  may 
be  its  victims.  The  college  student 
catches  at  least  glimpses  of  the 
big  things  which  awe  us  into  sim- 
plicity. And  not  simplicity  only,  but 
reverence.  "They  talk  of  science 
and  religion,"  said  a  distinguished 
professor  in  the  Harvard  Medical 
School.  "No  man  can  begin  to 
see  scientific  truth  without  finding 
something  which,  if  he  is  a  man  of 
any  size,  will  keep  him  reverent." 

I  doubt  whether  any  one  has  told 
more  effectively  what  a  college  may 
do  for  a  girl's  mind  than  Dr.  Thomas 
Fuller.  In  his  "Church  History  of 


88  TO  COLLEGE  GIRLS 

Britain,"  he  gives  a  short  chapter  to 
"  The  Con  veniency  of  She-Colleges ." 
(I  once  quoted  this  chapter  at  Smith 
College,  and  was  accused  of  mak- 
ing it  up.)  "  Nunneries  also,"  he 
observes,  "  were  good  She-Schools, 
wherein  the  girls  and  maids  of  the 
neighborhood  were  taught  to  read 
and  work;  and  sometimes  a  little 
Latin  was  taught  them  therein.  Yea, 
give  me  leave  to  say,  if  such  feminine 
foundations  had  still  continued,  pro- 
vided no  vow  were  obtruded  upon 
them  .  .  .  haply  the  weaker  sex  (be- 
side the  avoiding  modern  inconven- 
iences) might  be  heightened  to  a 
higher  perfection  than  hitherto  hath 
been  attained.  That  sharpness  of 
their  wits,  and  suddenness  of  their 
conceits,  which  their  enemies  must 
allow  unto  them,  might  by  education 


TO  COLLEGE  GIRLS  89 

be  improved  into  a  judicious  solidity; 
and  that  adorned  with  arts  which 
now  they  want,  not  because  they  can- 
not learn,  but  are  not  taught  them. 
I  say,  if  such  feminine  foundations 
were  extant  nowadays,  haply  some 
virgins  of  highest  birth  would  be 
glad  of  such  places ;  and,  I  am  sure, 
their  fathers  and  elder  brothers 
would  not  be  sorry  for  the  same." 

The  feminine  mind,  with  its  quick 
intuitions  and  unsteady  logic,  may 
keep  the  intuitions  and  gain  a  firm- 
ness which  makes  it  more  than  tran- 
siently stimulating.  The  emotional 
mind  has  its  charm,  especially  if  its 
emotions  are  favorable  to  ourselves. 
Women  have  long  been  celebrated 
for  their  power  to  love  blindly  —  the 
kind  of  love  some  men  must  have  if 
they  are  to  have  any.  They  arecele- 


90  TO  COLLEGE  GIRLS 

brated  also  for  their  power  to  keep 
on  loving  the  unworthy  when  their 
eyes  are  opened.  "Her  lot  is  on 
you,"  says  Mrs.  Hemans  in  "Even- 
ing Prayer  at  a  Girls'  School" :  — 

"  Her  lot  is  on  you  —  silent  tears  to  weep, 
And  patient  smiles  to  wear  through  suffering's 
hour, 

And  sumless  riches,  from  affection's  deep 
To  pour  on  broken  reeds  —  a  wasted  shower  I 

And  to  make  idols,  and  to  find  them  clay, 
And  to  bewail  that  worship.  Therefore  pray! 

"  Her  lot  is  on  you  —  to  be  found  untired, 
Watching  the  stars  out  by  the  bed  of  pain, 

With  a  pale  cheek,  and  yet  a  brow  inspired, 
And  a  true  heart  of  hope,  though  hope  be  vain ; 

Meekly  to  bear  with  wrong,  to  cheer  decay, 
And,  oh  I  to  love  through  all  things.  Therefore 
pray  1 " 

In  some  things  it  may  be  well  that 
emotion  is  greater  than  logic ;  but 
emotion  in  logic  is  sad  to  contend 
with,  sad  even  to  contemplate  —  and 


TO  COLLEGE  GIRLS  91 

such  is  too  often  the  reasoning  of  the 
untrained  woman.  Do  not  for  a  mo- 
ment suppose  that  I  believe  such 
reasoning  peculiar  to  women;  but 
from  the  best  men  it  has  been  in 
great  measure  trained  out ;  and  it 
affects  a  higher  grade  of  women, 
partly  from  physical  causes,  chiefly 
from  a  lack  through  many  genera- 
tions of  the  remedy  applied  to  the 
best  men.  It  is  scarcely  seventy-five 
years  since  a  young  New  England 
girl,  a  lawyer's  daughter,  spent  many 
hours  in  working  on  a  sampler  these 
verses,  presumably  absorbing  them 
into  her  system  as  she  worked :  — 

••  Plain  as  this  canvas  was,  as  plain  we  find 
Unlettered,  unadorned,  the  female  mind. 
No  fine  ideas  fill  the  vacant  soul. 
No  graceful  coloring  animates  the  whole, 
By  close  attention  carefully  inwrought 
Fair  education  paints  the  pleasing  thought, 


92  TO  COLLEGE  GIRLS 

My  heart  exults  while  to  the  attentive  eye 
The  curious  needle  spreads  the  enamelled  dye, 
While  varying  shades  the  pleasing  task  beguile. 
My  friends  approve  me  and  my  parents  smile." 

It  seems  just  to  believe  that  a  girl 
may  have  more  mind  than  the  poet 
approved,  without  less  charm.  Dry- 
den  has  been  laughed  at  for  saying 
that  a  man  needs  ' '  in  some  measure 
a  mathematical  head  to  be  a  com- 
plete and  excellent  poet,"  and  that 
imagination  in  poetry  needs  the 
* '  clogs  "  of  judgment ;  yet  in  some 
degree  Dry  den  was  right .  To  be  re- 
spected, poetry  —  and  women,  who 
are  at  their  best  a  kind  of  poetry 
- — must  make  sense.  There  is  sense 
in  loving  the  broken  idol.  To  love 
what  is  proved  unworthy  is  not  the 
weakness  of  woman ;  it  is  rather  the 
strength  of  God. 

In  a  right-minded,  sound-hearted 


TO  COLLEGE  GIRLS  93 

girl,  college  training  tends  toward 
control  of  the  nervous  system  ;  and 
control  of  the  nervous  system  — 
making  it  servant  and  not  master  — 
is  almost  the  supreme  need  of  wo- 
men. Without  such  control  they  be- 
come helpless;  with  it  they  know 
scarcely  a  limit  to  their  efficiency. 
The  world  does  not  yet  understand 
that  for  the  finest  and  highest  work 
it  looks  and  must  look  to  the  natu- 
rally sensitive,  whether  women  or 
men.  I  remember  expressing  to  the 
late  Professor  Greenough  regret  that 
a  certain  young  teacher  was  nervous. 
His  answer  has  been  a  comfort  to  me 
ever  since.  "I  wouldn't  give  ten 
cents  for  any  one  who  isn't."  The 
nervous  man  or  woman  is  bound 
to  suffer ;  but  the  nervous  man  or 
woman  may  rise  to  heights  that  the 


94  TO  COLLEGE  GIRLS 

naturally  calm  can  never  reach  and 
can  seldom  see.  To  whom  do  you  go 
for  counsel?  To  the  calm,  no  doubt ; 
but  never  to  the  phlegmatic  — 
never  to  the  calm  who  are  calm  be- 
cause they  know  no  better  (like  the 
man  in  Ruskin  '  *  to  whom  the  prim- 
rose is  very  accurately  the  primrose 
because  he  does  not  love  it").  You 
go  to  the  calm  who  have  fought 
for  their  calmness,  who  have  known 
what  it  is  to  quiver  in  every  nerve, 
but  have  put  through  whatever  they 
have  taken  in  hand.  "  I  saw  a  queer 
old  man  over  there  in  the  corner," 
said  a  little  girl  sent  to  bed  in  the 
dark ;  *  *  but  I  just  turned  my  back  to 
him  and  shut  my  eyes  tight."  That 
child,  if  she  had  lived,  would  be  a 
counsellor  of  men  and  women.  When 
the  suffering  of  nervous  people  ex- 


TO  COLLEGE  GIRLS  95 

presses  itself  in  constant  exposition 
of  their  symptoms,  when  their  own 
nerves  become  the  centre  of  their 
lives,  we  are  sometimes  so  hasty  as  to 
wish  either  that  they  had  no  nerves, 
or  that  we  had  none.  We  forget  that 
they  show  perverted  power.  What 
suffering  is  that  of  the  countless  men 
and  women  who  have  fortitude  with- 
out strength  —  like  horses  that  road 
so  many  miles  an  hour  "on  their 
courage ! "  Yet  I  question  whether 
their  lives  are  not  as  efficient  as  those 
tha  t  know  no  weariness .  For  nobody 
who  is  not  "  strung  high"  can  take 
many  points  of  view  beside  his  own, 
a  power  essential  to  that  spiritual 
largeness  to  which  we  look  for  help. 
If  you  can  sympathize,  you  must 
suffer.  Would  you  give  up  sympa- 
thizing to  be  rid  of  suffering?  We 


96  TO  COLLEGE  GIRLS 

admire  a  machine,  but  we  do  not 
go  to  it  for  advice.  Should  you  like 
to  be  free  from  the  annoyance  of 
those  who  seek  you  as  a  counsel- 
lor? They  take  your  time,  wear 
your  nerves,  harrow  your  feelings, 
often  reject  what  you  offer,  leave 
you  exhausted  and  depressed  with 
the  depression  of  seeming  ineffi- 
ciency, with  a  sense  of  total  failure. 
Yet  it  cannot  be  total  failure,  for 
they  come  again.  And  if  you  stop 
to  think,  you  will  thank  heaven  that 
there  is  something  in  you  (God 
knows  what)  which  makes  you  a 
woman  from  whom  the  perplexed 
cannot  keep  away.  Some  of  the  per- 
plexed are  bores.  No  matter.  If  you 
give  your  life's  blood  to  those  who 
ask  for  it,  you  must  expect  some 
of  them  to  receive  it  as  Mr.  Casau- 


TO  COLLEGE  GIRLS  97 

bon  received  Dorothea's  love,  with 
"  sandy  absorption."  You  must  ex- 
pect even  a  vampire  now  and  then. 
I  knew  a  teacher  who  received  mer- 
ciless visits  from  the  father  of  one  of 
his  pupils  —  a  father  who  contended 
at  great  and,  if  I  may  say  it,  circular 
length  that  his  son,  an  exception- 
ally dull  youth,  ought  to  have  high 
marks  and  scholarships  whatever  his 
instructors  thought ;  that  his  son 
knew  more  history  than  the  profes- 
sors and  was  a  marvel  of  learning  to 
all  who  understood  him.  The  teacher 
writhed  inwardly,  but  sat  through 
the  last  visit  as  he  had  sat  through 
the  others.  * '  My  time  is  worse  than 
wasted,"  he  said  to  himself,  "The 
man  is  as  hopeless  as  his  son."  Sud- 
denly at  the  end  of  an  hour  or  so,  the 
father,  to  whom  not  one  point  had 


93  TO  COLLEGE  GIRLS 

been  yielded,  rose  to  go. ' '  One  thing 
I'll  say  to  you,"  he  said.  "  You've 
got  the  patience  of  an  ox  ! "  and  the 
teacher  felt  that  he  was  paid ;  paid 
because  what  he  had  tried  to  do  and 
had  come  perilously  near  failing  to 
do  he  had  done  —  because  if  he  could 
stand  that  man  indefinitely,  and 
could  make  the  man  see  that  he 
could  stand  him,  he  could  stand  any- 
body for  ever  after.  "This  listen- 
ing to  truth  and  error,"  says  Mr. 
Chesterton,  "  to  here  tics,  to  fools,  to 
intellectual  bullies,  to  desperate  par- 
tisans, to  mere  chatterers,  to  sys- 
tematic poisoners  of  the  mind,  is 
the  hardest  lesson  that  humanity 
has  ever  been  set  to  learn." 

All  this  may  seem  to  have  little 
connection  with  colleges.  There  are 
numberless  sweet  and  patient  wo- 


TO  COLLEGE  GIRLS  99 

men  who  never  studied  beyond  the 
curriculum  of  the  district  school, 
women  who  help  every  one  near 
them  by  their  own  unselfish  loveli- 
ness; but  the  intelligently  patient, 
the  women  who  can  put  themselves 
into  the  places  of  all  sorts  of  people, 
who  can  sympathize  not  merely  with 
great  and  manifest  griefs,  but  with 
every  delicate  jarring  of  the  human 
soul  —  hardest  of  all,  with  the  am- 
bitions of  the  dull  —  these  women, 
who  must  command  a  respect  intel- 
lectual as  well  as  moral,  reach  their 
highest  efficiency  through  experi- 
ence based  on  college  training. 

I  dwell  on  these  things  because 
the  older  I  grow  the  more  clearly  I 
see  that  one  of  the  great  problems  of 
life  is  the  transmuting  of  sensitive- 
ness into  strength,  of  weakness  into 


100  TO  COLLEGE  GIRLS 

inspiration.  "To  be  weak,"  says 
Satan  in  "Paradise  Lost,"  "is  mis- 
erable, doing  or  suffering."  ' '  I  take 
pleasure,"  says  St.  Paul,  "  ininfirm" 
ities,  in  reproaches,  in  necessities, 
in  persecutions,  in  distresses  for 
Christ's  sake ;  for  when  I  am  weak, 
then  am  I  strong."  The  problem 
confronts  many  men  and  most  wo- 
men. The  author  of  the  Upton  Let- 
ters, himself  as  delicately  sensitive 
as  a  woman,  writes  thus  of  depres- 
sion :  * '  When  one  lies  awake  in 
the  morning,  before  the  nerves  are 
braced  by  contact  with  the  whole- 
some day;  when  one  has  done  a 
tiring  piece  of  work,  and  is  alone, 
and  in  that  frame  of  mind  when  one 
needs  occupation,  but  yet  is  not 
brisk  enough  to  turn  to  the  work 
one  loves  ;  in  those  dreary  intervals 


TO  COLLEGE  GIRLS  101 

between  one's  work,  when  one  is  off 
with  the  old  and  not  yet  on  with  the 
new  —  well  I  know  all  the  corners 
ot  the  road,  the  shadowy  cavernous 
places  where  the  demons  lie  in  wait 
for  one,  as  they  do  for  the  wayfarer 
(do  you  remember  ?)  in  Bewick ,  who , 
desiring  to  rest  by  the  roadside, 
finds  the  dingle  all  alive  with  am- 
bushed fiends,  horned  and  heavy- 
limbed,  swollen  with  the  oppressive 
clumsiness  of  nightmare."  "But 
you,"  he  adds  to  his  correspondent, 
"have  enough  philosophy  to  wait 
until  the  frozen  mood  thaws,  and 
the  old  thrill  comes  back.  That  is 
one  of  the  real  compensations  of 
middle  age.  When  one  is  young, 
one  imagines  that  any  depression 
will  be  continuous ;  and  one  sees  the 
dreary  uncomforted  road  winding 


102  TO  COLLEGE  GIRLS 

ahead  over  bare  hills  till  it  falls  to 
the  dark  valley." 

All  this  is  true:  depression  goes 
as  mysteriously  as  it  came,  the  fog 
lifts  as  suddenly  as  it  closed  in ;  but 
this  at  best  is  consolation,  not  gos- 
pel—  a  sort  of  half-hearted  assur- 
ance that  life  is  not  so  bad  after  all. 
What  I  mean  by  the  transmuting 
of  weakness,  of  sensitiveness,  into 
strength  is  more  active  than  resigna- 
tion, more  courageous  than  forti- 
tude. In  Bro  wning's  "Childe  Roland 
to  the  Dark  Tower  came,"  the  hero 
passes  through  everything  that 
could  take  the  heart  out  of  a  man  — 
the  most  desolate,  the  meanest,  the 
most  God-forsaken  country  that  ever 
poet  depicted  or  imagined,  in  which 
every  object  seems  knavishly  de- 
signed to  terrify  by  a  sort  of  foul 


TO  COLLEGE  GIRLS  103 

ignobleness,  such  as  summons  all 
manner  of  evil  spirits  into  a  fear- 
ful mind  and  yields  nothing  for  a 
healthy  mind  to  react  on.  Through 
what  seems  the  deliberate  effort  of 
Nature  to  sap  his  power  of  resisting 
fear,  he  goes  on  and  on  till  suddenly 
he  is  face  to  face  with  death.  Then 
comes  the  story  which  —  next  to 
that  of  the  cross  —  shows  best  the 
quivering  human  soul  that  feels  to 
the  full  every  terror  real  or  imagin- 
ary, yet  steels  itself  to  its  work  till 
its  last  act  is  an  act  of  triumph  and 
an  inspiration  to  the  world :  — 

"  Burningly  it  came  on  me  all  at  once. 

This  was  the  place  I  those  two  hills  on  the  right, 
Crouched  like  two  bulls  locked  horn  in  horn 

in  fight, 
While,  to  the  left,  a  tall  scalped  mountain  ... 

Dunce, 

Dotard,  a-dozing  at  the  very  nonce, 
After  a  life  spent  training  for  the  sight  1 


104          TO  COLLEGE  GIRLS 

••  What  in  the  midst  lay  but  the  Tower  itself? 
The  round,  squat  turret,  blind  as  the  fool's 

heart, 

Built  of  brown  stone,  without  a  counterpart 
In  the  whole  world.  The  tempest's  mocking  elf 
Points  to  the  shipman  thus  the  unseen  shelf 
He  strikes  on  only  when  the  timbers  start. 

"Not  see?  because  of  night  perhaps? — why,  day 
Came  back  again  for  that  1  before  it  left, 
The  dying  sunset  kindled  through  a  cleft : 
The  hills,  like  giants  at  a  hunting,  lay, 
Chin  upon  hand,  to  see  the  game  at  bay,  — 
'Now  staband  end  the  creature — to  the  heft  1* 

"  Not  hear,  when  noise  was  everywhere  1  it  tolled 
Increasing  like  a  bell.  Names  in  my  ears 
Of  all  the  lost  adventurers  my  peers, — 
How  such  a  one  was  strong,  and  such  was  bold. 
And  such  was  fortunate,  yet  each  of  old 
Lost,  lost!  one  moment  knelled  the  woe  of 
years. 

"There  they  stood,  ranged  along  the  hill-sides,  met 
To  view  the  last  of  me,  a  living  frame 
For  one  more  picture  I  in  a  sheet  of  flame 
I  saw  them  and  I  knew  them  all.  And  yet 
Dauntless  the  slug-horn  to  my  lips  I  set, 
And  blew.  '  Childe  Roland  to  the  Dark  Tower 
came!'" 


TO  COLLEGE  GIRLS          105 

This  is  the  courage  that  is  possible 
to  every  woman  and  indeed,  in  a 
world  like  ours,  necessary  to  women 
if  they  are  to  realize  the  high  pur- 
pose of  their  lives.  With  this  cour- 
age they  may  accomplish  almost 
anything.  "Do  not  be  disheart- 
ened,"said  Father  Taylor,  "because 
you  are  so  weak.  Remember  that 
eighteen  hundred  years  ago  twelve 
feeble  pair  of  arms  lifted  up  the 
world  and  carried  it  to  God." 

I  speak  of  that  high  womanliness 
which  is  as  unlike  femininity  as  pu- 
erility or  juvenility  is  unlike  strong 
and  wholesome  youth,  that  woman- 
liness which  it  is  the  purpose  of  a 
woman's  college  to  inspire  and  to 
sustain.  The  notion  that  a  woman 
is  at  her  best  a  sort  of  pretty  fool  with 
smelling  salts  is  on  P.  of  the  first  false 


106  TO  COLLEGE  GIRLS 

notions  that  the  girls'  college  has 
dispelled.  The  college  woman,  as  I 
see  her,  is  a  woman  through  and 
through — not  an  alluring  time-killer 
who  appeals  at  her  worsttothe  basest 
and  at  her  best  to  the  most  frivolous 
instincts  of  man.  "  I  believe  in  col- 
lege girls  as  wives,"  said  a  Harvard 
graduate  with  no  daughters  but  with 
two  sons  who  had  married  college 
girls.  One  of  these  wives  was  abroad 
with  her  husband,  who  was  study- 
ing; the  other  was  keeping  house 
for  her  husband  and  little  child,  with 
no  servant,  — and  a  happier  house- 
hold I  have  seldom  seen.  College  life 
had  been  her  business  once  ;  domes- 
tic life  was  her  business  now :  and 
her  training  had  taught  her  to  take 
up  whatever  was  her  business  with  a 
whole  heart.  The  college  life  of  the 


TO  COLLEGE  GIRLS  107 

past  enlarged  and  brightened  the  do- 
mestic life  of  the  present.  Her  sweet- 
ness was  intellectual  as  well  as  moral. 
Her  college  life  had  made  her  a  bet- 
ter companion  to  her  husband,  a 
better  guide  and  guardian  to  her 
child. 

Those  who  fear  that  the  higher 
education  unfits  women  for  drudgery 
have  in  mind  either  the  wrong  kind 
of  higher  education  or  the  wrong 
kind  of  women.  An  officer  of  a  wo- 
man's college,  when  asked  whether 
she  would  let  her  students  hear  an 
enthusiastic  physician  who  urged 
college  girls  to  think  of  becoming 
nurses,  remarked  that  she  did  not 
care  for  nursing  as  a  profession 
among  educated  women  because  of 
its  many  "disagreeable  details."  She 
failed  to  see  that  a  great  nurse  —  like 


108          TO  COLLEGE  GIRLS 

a  great  anybody  else — is  to  some 
degree  inspired,  and  that  to  an  in- 
spired being  a  disagreeable  detail,  if 
a  detail  of  duty,  is  glorified  as  a  small 
part  of  that  duty  which  is  a  crown- 
ing joy.  If  college  training  is  good 
for  anything,  it  is  good  in  showing 
us  what  little  things  are  little,  and 
what,  as  necessary  parts  of  the  great, 
have  themselves  taken  on  a  kind  of 
greatness.  Without  a  glimpse  of  the 
great  to  which  the  little  is  essential, 
of  the  little  which  we  love  because, 
like  Browning's  star,  it  has ' '  opened 
its  soul "  to  us,  life  becomes  at  its  best 
endurable,  and  earth,  as  the  hymn 
says,  "a  desert  drear."  With  such  a 
glimpse,  the  faintest-hearted  of  us 
may  have — indeed  must  have — 
moments  of  triumph.  At  college  we 
are  taught  to  feel  the  unexplored  big- 


TO  COLLEGE  GIRLS          109 

ness  of  every  subject,  the  relation  of 
truth  to  truth.  A  Harvard  student 
once  complained  bitterly  that  Zo- 
ology a:  and  Economics  y  (Sociology) 
conflicted  in  their  lecture  hours.  To 
my  untrained  mind  no  conflict  could 
be  less  damaging;  he,  however,  ex- 
plained that  *  *  Since  Sociology  has 
left  the  Sunday  School  and  become  a 
Science,  no  man  can  study  it  with- 
out a  knowledge  of  the  lower  forms 
of  animal  life," — and  I  dare  say  he 
was  right.  As  to  small  details,  I  have 
seen  enthusiasm  for  a  comma  which 
seemed  to  me  not  the  petty  love  of 
a  little  thing,  but  part  of  a  large  zeal 
for  truth. 

Let  us  consider  what  connection, 
if  any,  college  life  has  with  the  un- 
womanliness  so  often  charged  to 
its  account.  If  our  grandmothers 


110          TO  COLLEGE  GIRLS 

wrought  such  samplers  as  I  have  de- 
scribed, is  it  any  wonder  that  their 
descendants,  emancipated,  felt  like 
colts  turned  loose  in  a  field?  Or  that 
"the  female  mind,"  so  carefully 
emptied  before,  did  not  always 
evince  a  trained  wisdom  in  electing 
what  to  be  filled  with?  Just  as  in  the 
girls'  boarding  school  the  proscrip- 
tion of  boys  made  boys  more  inter- 
esting, so  the  prescription  of  femin- 
inity gave  masculinity  a  charm.  This 
was  especially  true  of  sporting  mas- 
culinity, which  in  men  themselves  is 
often  half  affectation.  Few  things 
are  more  pitiable  than  a  woman's 
deliberate  imitation  of  a  sporting 
man;  but  the  masculine  woman  is 
not  the  college  woman.  Offensive 
masculinity  in  a  woman  argues 
weakness  such  as  colleges  strive  to 


TO  COLLEGE  GIRLS          111 

remove.  The  effeminate  man  and 
the  masculine  woman  are  alike 
weak  in  that  discernment  which 
tells  people  what  they  are  made  for, 
what  they  cannot  be  becomingly, 
and  what  they  cannot  be  at  all.  A 
Harvard  student  commenting  on  a 
celebrated  but  overrated  preacher 
observed,  '*  Briefly,  his  whole  pulpit 
manner  is  that  of  a  man  not  quite  big 
enough  to  be  simple."  In  the  effem- 
inate man  and  in  the  masculine  wo- 
man we  feel  a  want  of  size — much 
as  we  feel  a  want  of  size  in  the  Amer- 
ican traveller  whom  a  few  weeks 
in  England  have  covered  with  what 
Professor  Greenough  used  to  call 
' '  Britannia  plate."  It  is  the  littleness 
of  a  person  not  strong  enough  to  re- 
sist the  moulding  force  of  surround- 
ings. There  are,  it  is  true,  occupa- 


112          TO  COLLEGE  GIRLS 

tions  in  which  scarcely  anybody  can 
succeed  without  loss  of  that  mod- 
est gentleness  which  becomes  both 
women  and  men.  An  auctioneer,  a 
book  agent,  an  * '  interviewing  "  re- 
porter must  dull  his  sensibilities  and 
sharpen  his  wits.  It  is  not  so  with  a 
college  student ;  certainly  it  is  not 
so  with  a  college  graduate  as  such. 
The  good  and  the  great  may  pass 
through  impressionable  periods 
which  render  them  more  or  less 
absurd  to  others,  and  in  retrospect 
to  themselves.  That  is  another  mat- 
ter. "Pen's  condescension,"  says 
Thackeray,  "at  this  time  of  his  life 
was  a  fine  thing  to  witness.  Amongst 
men  of  ability  this  assumption  and 
impertinence  passes  off  with  ex- 
treme youth ;  but  it  is  curious  to 
watch  the  conceit  of  a  generous  and 


TO  COLLEGE  GIRLS          113 

clever  lad  —  there  is  something  al- 
most touching  in  every  early  ex- 
hibition of  simplicity  and  folly." 

Just  so  a  slight  athletic  swagger  in  a 
young  woman  with  a  basketball  halo 
does  not  mean  that  she  will  be  man- 
nish for  life.  It  subsides,  like  the 
puffed  cheeks  of  mumps — rather 
grotesque  while  it  lasts,  but  not  at 
all  prophetic.  College  life,  designed 
as  it  is  to  strengthen  a  girl's  intellect 
and  character,  should  teach  her  to 
understand  better,  and  not  worse, 
herself  as  distinguished  from  other 
beings  of  her  own  sex  or  the  oppo- 
site, should  fortify  her  individuality, 
her  power  of  resisting,  and  her  de- 
termination to  resist,  the  contagion 
of  the  unwomanly.  Exaggerated 
study  may  lessen  womanly  charm ; 
but  there  is  nothing  loud  or  mascu- 


114  TO  COLLEGE  GIRLS 

line  about  it.  Nor  should  we  judge 
mental  training  or  anything  else  by 
scattered  cases  of  its  abuse.  The 
only  characteristics  of  women  that 
the  sensible  college  girl  has  lost  are 
feminine  frivolity,  and  that  kind  of 
headless  inaccuracy  in  thought  and 
speech  which  once  withheld  from 
the  sex  —  or  from  a  large  part  of  it 
— the  intellectual  respect  of  edu- 
cated men. 

At  college,  if  you  have  lived  right- 
ly, you  have  found  enough  learning 
to  make  you  humble,  enough  friend- 
ship to  make  your  hearts  large  and 
warm,  enough  culture  to  teach  you 
the  refinement  of  simplicity,  enough 
wisdom  to  keep  you  sweet  in  poverty 
and  temperate  in  wealth.  Here  you 
have  learned  to  see  great  and  small 
in  their  true  relation,  to  look  at  both 


TO  COLLEGE  GIRLS  115 

sides  of  a  question,  to  respect  the 
point  of  view  of  every  honest  man 
or  woman,  and  to  recognize  the 
point  of  view  that  differs  most 
widely  from  your  own.  Here  you 
have  found  the  democracy  that  ex- 
cludes neither  poor  nor  rich,  and 
the  quick  sympathy  that  listens  to 
all  and  helps  by  the  very  listening. 
Here  too,  it  may  be  at  the  end  of  a 
long  struggle,  you  have  seen  —  if 
only  in  transient  glimpses — that 
after  doubt  comes  reverence,  after 
anxiety  peace,  after  faintness  cour- 
age, and  that  out  of  weakness  we  are 
made  strong.  Suffer  these  glimpses 
to  become  an  abiding  vision,  and 
you  have  the  supreme  joy  of  life. 


COLLEGE  TEACHERS 
AND  COLLEGE  TAUGHT 

COMMENCEMENT  ADDRESS  AT  BRYN 
MAWR  COLLEGE,  1911 


COLLEGE  TEACHERS 
AND  COLLEGE  TAUGHT 

COMMENCEMENT  ADDRESS  AT  BBYN 
MAWR  COLLEGE.  1911 

FIRST,  let  me  relieve  your  minds  ot 
one  apprehension.  I  am  not  going 
to  talk  about  "woman, "not  even 
about  the  education  of  woman  as  wo- 
man ;  nor  about  the  relative  talents 
and  powers  and  privileges  of  the 
sexes.  My  subject,  however,  is  no 
fresher  than  if  I  were.  Woman  I 
may  steer  clear  of;  education  I  can- 
not. The  question  what  a  college 
education  can  do  for  us  will  never 
be  answered  until  we  know  what  is 
a  college,  what  is  education,  and 
what  are  we,  —  inquiries  which 


120          COLLEGE  TEACHERS 

countless  persons  answer  with  con- 
fidence and  ease,  but  which  no  two 
persons  answer  alike.  I  cannot  pro- 
fess to  solve  these  or  any  other  pro- 
blems of  the  centuries.  lean  merely 
look  at  certain  aspects  of  college  ed- 
ucation in  America. 

Someyears  ago  a  committee  of  the 
Harvard  Faculty  was  appointed  to 
consider  how  the  teaching  in  Har- 
vard College  might  be  improved.  It 
began  with  the  simple  proposition 
that  there  are  two  parties  to  teaching, 
the  teacher  and  the  taught;  and  it 
continued  with  the  corollary  nearly 
as  simple,  —  no  investigation  of 
teaching  is  worth  much  which  does 
not  take  into  account  the  effect  on  the 
taught.  Accordingly  it  sent  out  two 
sets  of  questions,  one  to  the  teachers, 
one  to  the  students,  selecting  enough 


AND  COLLEGE  TAUGHT       121 

good,  bad,  and  mediocre  students 
from  each  class  to  represent  pub- 
lic opinion  fairly.  Every  reply  had 
a  signature  as  a  guarantee  of  good 
faith,  but  the  signatures  were 
promptly  detached.  They  were  kept 
by  the  chairman  of  the  committee, 
and  have  never  been  read,  even  by 
him.  The  seventeen  hundred  an- 
swers from  students,  answers  nearly 
always  friendly,  often  enthusiastic, 
and  at  times  wonderfully  shrewd, 
are  probably  the  truest  comment 
ever  made  on  instruction  in  Harvard 
College.  President,  then  Professor 
Lowell,  was  a  member  of  the  com- 
mittee. Always  alert  and  ready  for 
new  light-,  not  improbably  the  best 
teacher  in  the  college,  he  had  no 
sooner  read  the  students'  comments 
on  his  course  than  he  improved  his 


122         COLLEGE  TEACHERS 

method.  Some  other  men  received 
such  comments  with  contempt  and 
the  committee's  report  with  wrath; 
not  the  only  half-honest  wrath  of 
self-defenders  (for  the  students' 
comments  were  not  vicious),  but  the 
wrath  of  men  who  maintained  that 
the  whole  matter  was  none  of  the 
committee's  business,  and  that  the 
committee  should  have  known  as 
much.  Did  not  these  very  men  as  un- 
dergraduates express  clear  and  vig- 
orous opinions  about  their  teachers, 
and  have  they  changed  many  of  those 
opinions  since?  At  fifty-five  I  know, 
if  I  know  anything,  that  though  I 
have  had  many  good  teachers,  I  have 
had  five  born  teachers,  and  five  only, 
— one  in  the  grammar  school,  two 
in  the  high  school,  and  two  in  the 
college.  At  fifty-five  I  know  that  at 


AND  COLLEGE  TAUGHT       123 

ten  I  came  into  contact  with  one  of 
these  born  teachers.  I  doubtless  ex- 
aggerated what  he  knew,  but  forty- 
five  years  have  increased  rather  than 
diminished  my  confidence  in  what 
he  taught.  I  do  not  know,  I  never 
shall  know,  who  are  the  best  teachers 
at  Bryn  Mawr;  but  you  know,  now 
and  for  life.  There  may  be  a  dozen 
reasons  for  not  keeping  this  or  that 
inspiring  teacher  in  this  or  that  col- 
lege; but  I  suspect  that  in  judging 
the  equipment  of  the  college  teacher 
to-day  we  overrate  learning,  espe- 
cially the  learning  revealed  (or  con- 
cealed) in  research,  and  underrate 
that  personal  magnetism,  and  that 
love  of  imparting  without  which  no 
teacher  can  wake  his  pupils  into  in- 
tellectual enthusiasm. 

The  second  discovery  of  the  com- 


124          COLLEGE  TEACHERS 

mittee  on  improving  instruction 
was  the  discovery  that  we  might  im- 
prove instruction  by  giving  less  of 
it.  The  time  the  student  spent  in  the 
lecture  room  was,  in  many  cases, 
out  of  all  proportion  to  the  time  he 
spent  in  studying.  We,  who  over- 
emphasize research  into  any  corner 
of  truth  however  remote,  do  not  suf- 
fer our  undergraduates  to  work  out 
their  problems  by  and  for  them- 
selves, —  perhaps  I  should  say,  do 
not  require  them  to  do  so.  The  lec- 
turer under  the  elective  system  is 
never  sure  that  his  pupils  have  done 
before  his  lecture  what  they  must  do 
if  his  lecture  is  to  be  understood. 
Therefore  he  is  tempted  to  take  on 
himself  their  work,  and  they  are 
tempted  more  than  ever  to  let  him 
do  it.  Yet  no  strong  and  fine  results 


AND  COLLEGE  TAUGHT       125 

can  come  from  intellectual  spoon- 
feeding. The  student  of  high  quality 
and  independent  spirit  rebels  against 
instruction  one  quarter  of  which  is 
enough  to  put  his  mind  on  the  right 
path,  and  the  whole  of  which  may  set 
it  obstinately  on  the  wrong  one .  An 
old  New  England  watchmaker,  when 
somebody  took  him  a  fine  Swiss 
watch  for  repairs,  observed,  "I  can 
take  her  apart,  and  I  can  put  her  to- 
gether again,  and  she  may  go ;  but 
somehow  it  seems  as  if  the  man  that 
made  one  of  them  fine  watches  put 
in  somethin'  of  his  own  that  /  can't 
understand ;  so  I  most  ginerally  give 
'em  a  few  drops  of  ile  and  lay  'em  by 
in  a  drawer  for  two  or  three  weeks, 
and  most  on  'em  kind  o'  think  it  out 
for  themselves." 

"Appreciation  of  beauty  may  be 


126          COLLEGE  TEACHERS 

catching,"  said  Mr.  James  Groswell, 
"but  you  can't  vaccinate  with  it"; 
and  Mr.  James  Croswell  says  many 
wise  things.  The  nobly  infectious 
teachers  are  few,  but  they  are  the 
teachers,  and  have  been,  since  teach- 
ing and  time  began.  Pedagogy  may 
make  almost  any  intelligent  man  a 
teacher  of  a  sort,  just  as  training 
will  make  almost  any  musical  man 
a  pianist  of  a  sort.  Teachers  and 
pianists  are  made  as  well  as  born;  but 
it  is  the  born  teachers,  not  the  mere 
middlemen,  who  interpret  literature 
— literature  and  life.  To  be  inspiring 
you  must  yourself  be  inspired.  What 
are  the  tradition  and  the  spirit  of  any 
college  but  the  tradition  and  the 
spirit  of  a  few  great  teachers  whose 
lives  have  been  wrought  into  the  very 
fibre  of  it,  who  have  been  and  are  the 


AND  COLLEGE  TAUGHT       127 

quintessence  of  it,  till  it  has  become 
the  quintessence  of  them,  the  pre- 
cious life-blood  of  those  master- 
spirits '  *  embalmed  and  treasured  up 
on  purpose  to  a  life  beyond  life." 
Living  or  dead  it  is  they  who  give 
each  college  its  own  meaning,  who 
put  into  it  something  of  their  own 
that  no  outsider  can  understand.  It 
is  they  also  who,  however  varied 
their  manifestations,  reveal  one  and 
the  same  thing.  For  just  as  St. 
Francis,  and  Luther  and  Wesley  alike 
speak  religion;  just  as  Homer  and 
Dante  and  Shakspere  alike  speak 
poetry ;  just  as  Aristotle  and  New- 
ton and  Pasteur  alike  speak  science, 
so  do  these  men  and  women  alike 
speak  that  mighty  truth  in  which 
religion  and  poetry  and  science  are 
blended,  the  truth  made  manifest, 


128          COLLEGE  TEACHERS 

as  nowhere  else  in  the  world,  at 
college. 

To  this  truth,  you,  if  I  may  con- 
tinue Mr.  CroswelTs  figure,  have 
been  exposed  for  four  years.  Now 
four  years  is  a  large  fraction  of  any 
life,  and  scarcely  less  than  a  tenth  of 
the  best  years  in  a  long  life.  With 
some  of  you  it  is  a  much  larger  frac- 
tion than  this:  for 

"  *Tis  some  to  the  pinnacle,  some  to  the  deep 
And  some  in  the  glow  of  their  strength  to  sleep." 

Every  one  of  you  who  thinks  must 
have  asked  herself  again  and  again 
why  she  spends  four  of  the  most 
glorious  years  of  her  youth  at  col- 
lege ;  why  she  came  at  all,  and  hav- 
ing come  why  she  did  not  —  like 
many  of  her  friends  —  merely  sam- 
ple college  life,  thus  make  herself  a 
Bryn  Mawr  woman  for  all  time,  and 


AND  COLLEGE  TAUGHT       129 

"come  out "  into  that  society  which 
is  eagerly  awaiting  her.  Christopher 
North  asks  whether  there  is  "a  book 
in  verse  or  prose,  in  any  language, 
in  which  human  life  is  not  likened 
to  a  river  or  a  river  to  human  life." 
The  figure  occurs,  he  says,  "often 
in  Hoyle  on  Whist  .  .  .  and  once  at 
least  in  every  page  of  every  volume 
of  sermons  entered  at  Stationers' 
Hall."  Now  a  figure  so  prevalent,  so 
epidemic  as  that,  may  be  tiresome, 
but  must  be  more  or  less  true,  and 
like  all  true  figures  may  be  revived 
even  when  worked  half  to  death. 
President  Hyde  of  Bowdoin  College 
likens  the  college  years  to  a  dam- 
ming of  the  stream,  a  check  for  the 
accumulation  of  power,  — power  to 
turn  the  great  wheels  of  life.  Have 
you  accumulated  power?  The  pleas- 


130          COLLEGE  TEACHERS 

ure  of  it  all  is  plain  enough — the 
friendships,  the  joy  of  learning,  the 
keen  delight  of  growth,  a  delight  so 
sensitive  as  to  be  half  yearning  and 
pain,  as  many  delights  are,  but  a 
delight  which  she  who  has  tasted 
cannot  forego.  These  things  are  in 
themselves  a  partial  justification.  So, 
too,  is  learning.  Yet  at  the  risk  of 
disgracing  myself  here  for  ever,  I 
confess  that  I  have  my  intermittent 
doubts  as  to  much  which  passes  for 
learning  in  the  University  world  to- 
day. Every  par  tide  of  truth  deserves 
respect ;  every  honest  bit  of  research 
trains  the  industry  and  much  re- 
search trains  the  intellect:  but  I  am 
Philistine  enough  to  believe  that  the 
industry  and  the  intellect  deserve 
better  training  than  they  get  in  some 
graduate  work.  I  was  once  brought 


AND  COLLEGE  TAUGHT       131 

suddenly  from  my  bedroom  in  the 
evening  to  my  front  door.  *  *  Who  is 
there? "said  I.  "I'm  a  Sophomore 
in  Harvard  College,"  said  a  voice. 
* '  I'm  being  initiated  into  the  Dickey, 
and  before  to-morrow  noon  I  must 
know  how  many  girls  were  expelled 
from  Radcliffe  in  the  years  1 908  and 
1909,  and  the  sum  total  of  their  ages ; 
and  before  to-morrow  noon  I  Ve  got 
to  count  all  the  steps  in  the  Tou- 
raine."  Never  before  had  I  seen  so 
clearly  the  resemblance  between  in- 
itiation and  research.  To  me  the 
Philistinism  seems  often  in  the  re- 
search itself —  secluded  concentra- 
tion of  the  mind  for  years  on  a  pro- 
blem of  small  importance,  till,  after 
long  grubbing  the  chrysalis  splits 
and  the  doctor  bursts  upon  the 
world.  In  that  world  he  has  no  se- 


132          COLLEGE  TEACHERS 

elusion  and  constantly  broken  con- 
centration. He  must  mark  the 
themes,  we  will  say,  of  a  hundred 
crude  and  riotous  Freshmenand  hold 
their  attention  in  the  class.  They 
have  no  use  for  his  specialty,  and  he 
through  force  of  habit  yearns  for  it, 
and  in  fear  of  losing  it  would  teach 
it  at  once.  He  is  a  misfit  except  at 
the  top,  and  the  top  is  occupied  by 
a  perfectly  healthy  gentleman  who 
means  to  stay  there.  Whether  even 
at  the  top  he  would  keep  his  bal- 
ance is  extremely  doubtful;  for  he 
has  built  high  on  a  narrow  base  and 
is  heavily  loaded  on  one  side .  I  speak 
of  the  men  and  women  who  have 
dulled  rather  than  sharpened  their 
powers;  of  some  investigators,  not 
of  all.  A  man  whose  doctor's  thesis 
concerns  the  influence  of  Spenser  or 


AND  COLLEGE  TAUGHT       133 

of  Milton  is  not  unfitting  himself  for 
the  society  of  his  young  pupils  to  be; 
but  your  thoroughgoing  modern 
scholar,  as  I  perceive  him  from  my 
position  outside  of  the  paling,  re- 
spects one  truth  about  as  much  as 
another.  Germany  knew  a  time 
when  scholars  who  believed  that 
Athene  in  the  Eumenides  of  /Eschy- 
lus  appeared  in  a  chariot  would  not 
speak  to  those  who  believed  that  she 
did  not.  The  question  whether  it  was 
Langland,  or  Langley  or  somebody 
else  who  wrote  what  we  commonly 
call  "Piers  Plowman,"  the  question 
whether  it  was  or  was  not  Richard 
Rolle  who  wrote  "The  Prick  of  Con- 
science"— questions  to  which  one  of 
the  most  brilliant  professors  in  this 
country  and  one  of  the  ablest  grad- 
uates of  this  college  have  given  their 


134          COLLEGE  TEACHERS 

best  powers,  are  to  the  American  lit- 
erary scholar  of  to-day  exciting,  even 
burning  questions.  Would  they  have 
been  burning  questions  to  Emerson 
or  to  Charles  Eliot  Norton  or  to  Ben- 
jamin Jowett? 

Harvard  and  Chicago  are  justly 
proud  of  Professor  Manly's  work; 
Bryn  Mawr  and  Radcliffe  are  justly 
proud  of  Miss  Allen's.  The  question 
of  utility  is  not  the  only  question  for 
a  scholar;  there  may  be  a  noble  dis- 
regard of  utility  in  the  self-reward- 
ing exercise  of  the  mind.  Severe 
training,  too,  is  the  best  antidote  to 
the  vague  and  the  sloppy.  In  the 
same  college  class  with  Charles  Eliot 
Norton  was  Francis  James  Child, 
who  held  himself  and  his  pupils  to 
close  and  detailed  study  as  their  sal- 
vation. I  shall  never  forget  his  dis- 


AND  COLLEGE  TAUGHT      135 

gust  when  a  student  proposed  as  a 
subject  for  an  honor  thesis  "Was 
Hamlet  mad?"  or  the  slight  value 
he  put  on  undergraduate  writing, 
which  no  doubt  is  often  pretentious 
and  shallow.  Yet,  though  he  arrived 
after  twenty  years  of  theme-marking 
at  the  apparent  belief  that  creative 
work  is  a  thing  of  the  past,  and  that 
we  should  hold  students  to  a  close 
study  of  the  past  rather  than  encour- 
age them  in  chasing  ideas  of  their 
own,  I  think  he  was  half  wrong.  "I 
desire  in  this  life,"  said  Browning, 
"to  live  and  just  write  out  certain 
things  which  are  in  me,  and  so  save 
my  soul."  The  glory  of  a  college  is 
in  its  creative  scholars  (whether  the 
creation  be  scientific  or  imaginative, 
chemistry  or  poetry).  To  the  crea- 
tive scholars  the  University  should 


136          COLLEGE  TEACHERS 

offer  every  aid  of  generous  and 
searching  criticism,  and  of  whole- 
souled  encouragement.  They  will  be 
few,  and  beside  their  successes  we 
count  many  partial  failures : 

"Ah,  but  a  man's  reach  should  exceed  his  grasp. 
Or  what 's  a  heaven  for  ?" 

One  of  our  dangers  is  in  subsidizing 
uninspired  graduate  work,  in  con- 
structing what  Doctor  Crothers  has 
called  intellectual  Dreadnoughts, 
that  cannot  be  got  out  of  the  dock — 
in  keeping  at  the  University  men 
who  have  eaten  of  the  lotus  and 
forget  return.  For  these  men  the 
years  of  study  have  not  dammed  the 
stream,  they  have  stagnated  it. 

When  Mr.  Roosevelt  declared  that 
the  University  should  encourage  a 
few  productive  —  not  annotative  — 
scholars,  he  declared  also  that  the 


AND  COLLEGE  TAUGHT      137 

great  body  of  students  it  should  train 
not  as  scholars  but  as  citizens.  One 
might  express  the  same  idea  differ- 
ently by  saying  that  its  scholarship 
should  maintain  a  human  side.  The 
best  kind  of  scholar  is  ipso  facto  a 
good  citizen,  diffusing  culture  and 
taste  without  conscious  effort.  Col- 
lege training  should  visibly  polish 
the  mind.  I  say  "should"  rather 
than  "does,"  because  now  and  then 
it  does  not:  that  is,  the  gain  in  polish 
is  small  for  the  tune  it  covers.  Pos- 
sibly Professor  Shaler  was  right  in 
saying  that  we  have  more  *  'peasant- 
minded  students"  than  of  old:  at  all 
events,  whether  through  decay  of 
classical  learning  or  not,  some  men's 
taste  shows  about  as  little  of  their 
college  training  as  their  memories 
disclose  of  their  Greek  or  their  Alge- 


138  COLLEGE  TEACHERS 

bra.  "  They  come,"  as  Mrs.  Brown- 
ing would  say,  *  *  and  eat  their  bread 
and  cheese  on  the  high  altar." 
"Evelyn  Hope,"  wrote  a  student  in 
the  Harvard  Graduate  School  at  an 
examination  in  Browning,  * '  Evelyn 
Hope  is  the  monologue  of  a  mature 
man  in  the  presence  of  a  young  lady's 
corpse."  The  worst  of  it  is  he  was 
right.  Evelyn  Hope  is  a  monologue, 
and  the  remains,  as  he  might  have 
said,  are  not  absent.  As  a  matter  of 
fact  he  knew  a  great  deal  about 
Browning,  — and  knew  it  (literally) 
as  a  matter  of  fact.  The  puzzle  is  that 
a  man  could  come  through  any  col- 
lege (what  his  college  was  I  do  not 
remember),  and  love  any  poetry, 
and  show  so  little  of  either  poetry  or 
college.  The  queer  thing  about  taste, 
you  know,  is  that  at  any  one  point 


AND  COLLEGE  TAUGHT       139 

in  our  ascent  we  look  on  those  below 
us  as  crude,  though  just  where  we 
were  a  year  ago,  and  on  those  above 
us  as  finical,  though  just  where  we 
shall  be  a  year  hence.  Still  we  do 
recognize  a  natural  progress  in  the 
taste  of  every  educated  man, — until 
such  a  sentence  as  I  have  quoted 
strikes  us  like  a  blow.  When  could 
the  author's  taste  have  been  worse? 
When  can  it  be  better?  How  has  he 
justified  by  culture  his  college  years? 
Again  we  have  a  right  to  look  to 
college  men  and  women  for  leaders 
in  thought  and  action,  for  executive 
heads,  whether  in  the  learned  pro- 
fessions or  in  business  or  in  phi- 
lanthropy. Here,  on  the  whole,  the 
college  does  better  than  one  who 
knows  its  methods  would  expect.  In 
every  city,  and  many  a  town,  are 


140          COLLEGE  TEACHERS 

persons  who  justify  their  college 
years  by  leadership.  What  must  you 
do  to  be  leaders? 

There  are  two  kinds  of  executive, 
the  one  who  stimulates  and  the  one 
who  accomplishes.  A  clever  woman 
once  said  of  the  Reverend  Edward 
Everett  Hale :  "I  know  he  does  n't 
finish  much,  but  he  has  cut  and 
basted  more  things  than  anybody 
living."  His  was  the  leadership  of 
what  President  Eliot  calls  the  " fer- 
tile and  adventurous  thinker."  But 
his  leadership  was  incomplete:  to 
adopt  his  method  you  need  his  mag- 
netism, his  touch  of  genius;  other- 
wise you  will  become  a  mere  inac- 
curate disturber  of  society.  We  hear 
a  great  deal  about ' '  initiative  "  and 
" constructive  imagination."  Doc- 
tor Hale  had  both,  and  probably 


AND  COLLEGE  TAUGHT       141 

never  stopped  to  consider  whether 
he  had  either.  He,  like  the  other 
great  teachers  of  whom  I  have 
spoken,  could  inspire  because  him- 
self inspired;  but  for  one  such  divine 
cutter  and  baster  there  are  several 
hundred  who,  with  no  inspiration, 
and  with  no  knowledge  that  they 
have  no  inspiration,  unsteady  their 
associates  by  an  irrepressible  initia- 
tive without  wisdom.  I  have  seen 
them  in  colleges,  vehemently  urg- 
ing half-baked  plans,  squandering 
their  own  energy  and  that  of  their 
colleagues  —  well-intentioned,  of- 
ten high-minded  nuisances.  This 
is  but  pseudo-leadership.  Still  more 
trying  is  that  other  pseudo-leader- 
ship which  with  great  stir  involves 
neighbors  and  friends  in  a  big,  com- 
plicated scheme,  and  then  stands 


142          COLLEGE  TEACHERS 

from  under,  leaving  the  hard  work 
and  probable  failure  to  a  lower  order 
of  mind.  This  is  one  danger  of  aca- 
demic self-satisfaction.  The  true 
leader  not  merely  plans,  but  exe- 
cutes, nor  does  he  as  a  rule  make  a 
noise.  Rather,  as  Mrs.  Browning 
said  of  her  husband,  he  works  "  as 
the  cedars  grow,  upward,  and  with- 
out noise,  and  without  turning  to 
look  on  the  darkness"  he  causes 
upon  the  ground.  I  have  known 
men  and  women  who  thought  they 
were  executive  when  they  were  sim- 
ply cross, — as  if  browbeating  were 
efficiency.  Sometimes  they  fright- 
ened people  into  neglecting  other 
people  in  their  behalf,  and  got  things 
in  which  they  were  interested  done 
first.  Thus,  looked  at  narrowly, 
they  seemed  more  efficient  than 


AND  COLLEGE  TAUGHT       143 

they  were ;  looked  at  in  their  rela- 
tion to  their  surroundings,  they 
put  back  as  many  good  things  as 
they  advanced.  The  efficient  man 
is  not  the  man  who  grabs  another 
man's  clerk  for  his  own  statistics  but 
the  man  who  uses  his  own  clerk  and 
himself  to  the  best  advantage.  He 
gets  the  best  yield  out  of  mind  and 
body  with  the  least  wear  and  tear, 
as  Mr.  Frederick  Taylor  does  in  the 
business  world.  Nagging  women  (I 
hasten  to  say  that  this  applies  also  to 
men)  are  never  executive,  though 
they  commonly  think  they  are,  and 
succeed  in  making  others  think  so. 
Some  of  the  best  executives  I  have 
ever  seen  have  moved  in  a  mysteri- 
ous way  their  wonders  to  perform, 
never  hurrying,  rarely  impatient, 
not  too  proud  to  associate  with  de- 


144          COLLEGE  TEACHERS 

tail,  yet  able,  courteously  as  it  were, 
to  make  detail  know  its  place.  Effi- 
ciency rendered  fertile  by  education 
is  a  great  need  of  our  time  and  of 
every  time.  As  heads  of  families,  as 
workers  in  the  unending  fight 
against  the  filth  and  the  vice  of  our 
cities,  as  antidotes  to  the  well-mean- 
ing headlessness  of  those  good  men 
and  women  who  mangle  where  they 
would  mend,  you  are  needed  each 
and  all.  Here  every  bit  of  your  col- 
lege training  will  help  you,  if  you 
never  parade  it,  but  let  it  silently 
do  its  appointed  work.  In  every 
problem  I  have  suggested  there  is 
enough  to  keep  you  humble;  to  him 
who  sees  clearly,  the  struggle  is 
rather  for  self-respect  against  hu- 
miliation. It  is  not  merely  that  the 
stone  you  roll  up  hill  shall  not  roll 


AND  COLLEGE  TAUGHT      145 

down,  but  that  it  shall  not  crush  you 
as  it  rolls.  The  problem  of  the  city, 
for  instance,  is  so  vast,  so  multifold, 
so  rankly  self-renewing — thousands 
of  children  born  of  vice,  in  vice,  and 
to  vice,  without  a  sign  of  hope  ex- 
cept that  seed  which,  hidden  deep 
in  every  human  soul,  may  struggle 
up  to  purity  and  beauty  like  the 
pond  lily  out  of  the  slime;  children 
born  to  recklessness,  covetousness, 
and  brutal  hate;  children  whose 
mortality  which  we  are  striving  to 
decrease  may  be  their  one  true  bless- 
ing. How  trivial  our  training  seems 
in  the  face  of  this,  for  who  are  we  ? 
Yet  sadly  enough,  it  is  in  the  face 
of  this  that  some  of  us  take  pride 
in  thinking  who  we  are,  and  thank 
God  we  are  not  as  other  men,  and 
patronize  the  poor.  Mrs.  Maud  Bal- 


146         COLLEGE  TEACHERS 

lington  Booth  tells  of  a  rector  who 
when  he  preached  in  prison,  where 
attendance,  even  at  chapel,  is  pre- 
scribed, began  with  the  cheerful 
greeting:  "My  dear  convicts,  I  am 
glad  to  see  so  many  of  you  here  this 
afternoon."  Not  long  since,  a  woman 
of  distinguished  family  and  high 
ideals  gave  a  talk  to  the  mothers  of 
a  boys'  club.  At  intervals  she  would 
stop  and  say  to  the  presiding  officer: 
*  *  Do  you  suppose  they  understand 
me?  "  She  said  it  so  audibly  that  the 
presiding  officer,  to  save  everyone's 
feelings,  answered  at  last,  as  audibly: 
"OhI  yes.  These  women  were  not 
all  born  in  America,  but  they  all 
understand  English."  "Oh!  I  don't 
mean  that!"  the  speaker  retorted; 
and  after  the  address  one  woman  was 
heard  to  remark:  "Some  folks  is 


AND  COLLEGE  TAUGHT       147 

afraid  other  folks  won't  know  what 
their  names  is." 

I  speak  of  this  because  you  and  I 
alike  belong  to  colleges  which  are 
believed  by  many  other  colleges  to 
think  of  themselves  more  highly 
than  they  ought  to  think.  President 
Hadley's  immortal  words,  "You  can 
always  tell  a  Harvard  man,  but  you 
can't  tell  him  much,"  will  serve  for 
my  college;  you  best  know  whether 
anyone  has  discovered  an  epigram 
for  yours.  How  far  the  charge  is  just, 
you  for  Bryn  Mawr  and  I  for  Harvard 
may  not  be  in  a  position  to  say,  but 
one  thing  is  certain:  nothing  is  surer 
death  to  our  large  efficiency  than  ac- 
ademic pretension.  Nor  is  anything 
less  excusable.  Who  feels  import- 
ant in  the  presence  of  the  ocean,  or 
of  the  night  sky,  or  on  the  prairie, 


148          COLLEGE  TEACHERS 

or  at  the  foot  of  Pikes  Peak?  Whose 
accomplishments  seem  to  signify 
when  he  or  she  has  had  the  merest 
glimpse  into  the  infinity  of  learning? 
To  justify  our  college  we  must  work 
not  only  hard,  but  humbly.  It  is  the 
universal  feeling  of  those  who  throw 
themselves  into  democratic  fellow- 
ship that  the  reason  why  it  is  more 
blessed  to  give  than  to  receive  is  be- 
cause he  who  unreservedly  gives  his 
whole  self  receives  more  than  he 
gives.  I  speak  of  this  because  we 
hear  in  colleges  so  much  about  self- 
development.  Philosophers  and 
even  ministers  are  constantly  preach- 
ing it,  and  in  preaching  have 
achieved  the  ugly  words  '  'selfhood" 
and  *  'selfness."  In  a  sense  it  is  right, 
no  doubt.  You  have  been  here,  if 
you  please,  for  self-development: 


AND  COLLEGE  TAUGHT       149 

making  five  talents  ten  has  been,  and 
still  is,  commended:  but  you  have 
not  been  self-developed  for  your- 
selves, nor  are  the  ten  talents  much 
better  than  five,  or  even  than  one, 
if  they  also  are  kept  in  a  napkin. 
The  only  valuable  leisure  class  is  a 
leisure  class  that  works;  the  only 
valuable  self-development  is  the  self- 
development  for  somebody  else. 
And  here  is  another  of  the  torment- 
ing problems  of  life:  to  keep  our 
maximum  efficiency  we  must  have 
regular  habits  of  recreation;  to  keep 
regular  habits  of  recreation  we  must 
again  and  again,  like  the  priest  and 
the  Levite,  pass  by  on  the  other  side. 
In  the  Civil  War  Governor  John  A. 
Andrew  of  Massachusetts  deliber- 
ately worked  at  a  rate  that  killed  him. 
The  emergency  called,  and  he  an- 


150          COLLEGE  TEACHERS 

swered  as  truly  as  Colonel  Shaw  who 
was  killed  in  battle.  Arnold  Toynbee 
died  young.  I  saw  him  but  once, 
not  many  months  before  his  death, 
and  the  frightful  signs  of  overwork 
in  his  face  I  shall  never  forget;  to  him 
the  social  problems  of  England  were 
as  truly  an  emergency  as  to  Gover- 
nor Andrew  the  Civil  War.  William 
Baldwin,  the  finest  example  I  know 
of  the  business  man  who  lived  up  to 
his  best  faith,  and  never  suffered  his 
ideals  to  get  shopworn,  died  at  forty- 
one.  On  every  side  we  hear  the  call 
of  the  emergency.  Shall  we  keep  on 
heeding  these  calls,  when  we  our- 
selves feel,  as  a  friend  of  mine  says, 
"like  the  latter  end  of  a  misspent 
life  ?"  Shall  we  always  cry:  "  Lord, 
here  am  I.  Send  me!"  even  unto 
death?  Or  shall  we  say:  "I  went  last 


AND  COLLEGE  TAUGHT       151 

time.  It  is  somebody  else's  turn.  I 
can  do  twice  as  much  in  the  long  run 
if  I  do  nine  tenths  as  much  now"  ? 
I  once  put  a  drop  of  ammonia  into 
my  eye  and  rushed  madly  for  the  oc- 
ulist. I  was  in  agony;  he,  I  under- 
stand, was  at  breakfast.  In  due  and 
deliberate  tune  he  came.  To  me 
there  was  an  emergency ;  to  him  there 
was  none.  How  many  undisturbed 
breakfasts  would  he  have  taken  if 
he  had  always  made  others'  emer- 
gencies his  own?  He  could  do  little 
for  me  but  relieve  my  mind,  and 
before  I  went  another  man  might 
come,  and  then  another — as  not 
only  doctors  but  deans  will  testify. 
Many  disturbed  meals  diminish  effi- 
ciency. Was  he  right?  To  this  day 
I  do  not  know.  The  self-preserver 
and  self-developer,  the  man  who 


152          COLLEGE  TEACHERS 

feels  his  responsibility  to  his  own  life, 
and  keeps  that  life  sedulously  for 
family  use  may  be  more  admirable 
than  the  man  who  leaves  wife  and 
six  children  in  a  desperate  effort  to 
save  from  drowning  somebody  who, 
so  far  as  the  world  can  see,  had  bet- 
ter be  drowned.  Every  bit  of  logic 
at  my  command  goes  to  prove  him 
more  admirable,  even  kinder,  and  in 
a  far-reaching  sense,  more  unselfish. 
Yet  the  sudden  disregard  of  every- 
thing but  the  one  thing  needful, 
the  quick  spring  to  the  sound  of  the 
trumpet,  even  the  deliberate  ignor- 
ing of  a  thousand  ties  for  the  least 
of  these  little  ones  when  deep  calleth 
unto  deep,  this  is  what  quickens  the 
heart  of  man.  The  words  "Whoso 
saveth  his  life  shall  lose  it"  find  their 
answer  even  in  the  weakest  of  us  all: 


AND  COLLEGE  TAUGHT       153 

"If  you  loved  only  what  were  worth  your  love, 
Love  were  clear  gain,  and  wholly  well  for  you : 
Make  the  low  nature  better  by  your  throes ! 
Give  earth  yourself.' 

The  trouble,  I  suppose,  is  not  in 
the  theory  of  self-development,  but 
in  the  state  of  mind  which  is  fostered 
by  constant  calculation  of  effect,  in 
the  peril  of  accepting  the  means  as 
the  end,  in  the  threatening  of  moral 
valetudinarianism,  of  nervous  pro- 
stration of  the  soul.  Lavish  and  in- 
discriminate alms -giving  we  now 
know  to  be  bad;  yet  we  still  see  what 
stung  John  Boyle  O'Reilly  into  his 
denunciation  of 

"The  organized  charity,  scrimped  and  iced 
In  the  name  of  a  cautious,  statistical  Christ." 

He  was  wrong,  but  wrong  with  a 
touch  of  right.  You  cannot  better 
justify  your  college  years  than  by 


154         COLLEGE  TEACHERS 

giving  political  economy  more  heart 
and  charity  more  head. 

One  of  the  best  gifts  that  a  college 
can  bestow  is  the  power  of  taking  a 
new  point  of  view  through  putting 
ourselves  into  another's  place.  To 
many  students  this  comes  hard,  but 
come  it  must,  as  they  hope  to  be 
saved.  Every  year  I  have  a  class,  of 
some  thirty  picked  men,  in  writing; 
and  nearly  every  year  I  find  in  that 
thirty  a  little  knot  of  four  or  five  who 
admire  each  other's  work  and  carp 
at  that  of  anybody  else,  who  are  a 
bit  supercilious,  without  knowing 
it,  about  writing  which  will  find  its 
way  to  the  public  as  soon  as  theirs, 
but  which  is  not  for  the  time  being 
fashionable  in  that  particular  college 
magazine  to  which  they  are  attached, 
—  a  magazine  that  would  serve  its 


AND  COLLEGE  TAUGHT       155 

purpose  much  better  if  its  taste  were 
more  catholic.  We  study  writing  in 
college  partly  to  learn  it  ourselves, 
partly  to  render  our  appreciation 
not  only  more  accurate  but  wider. 
To  the  American  world  the  name  of 
Charles  Eliot  Norton  stands  for  all 
that  is  fastidious,  even  for  what  is 
over-fastidious;  but  Charles  Eliot 
Norton's  collection  of  verse  and 
prose  called  "The  Heart  of  Oak 
Books"  shows  a  catholicity  which 
few  of  his  critics  could  approach,  a 
refined  literary  hospitality  not  less 
noteworthy  than  the  refined  human 
hospitality  of  his  Christmas  Eve  at 
Shady  Hill.  As  an  old  man  this  in- 
terpreter of  Dante  saw  and  hailed 
with  delight  the  genius  of  Mr.  Kip- 
ling. If  you  leave  college  without 
catholicity  of  taste,  something  is 


156         COLLEGE  TEACHERS 

wrong  either  with  the  college  or  with 
you. 

As  in  literature,  so  in  life.  The 
greatest  teachers — even  Christ  him- 
self—  have  taught  nothing  greater 
than  the  power  of  seeing  with  the 
eyes  of  another  soul.  "Browning," 
said  a  woman  who  loves  poetry, 
"seems  to  me  not  so  much  man  as 
God. "  For  Bro  wning,beyond  all  men 
in  the  past  century,  beyond  nearly 
all  men  of  all  time,  could  throw  him- 
self into  the  person  of  another. 

"God  be  thanked,  the  meanest  of  his  creatures 
Boasts  two  soul-sides,  one  to  face  the  world  with, 
One  to  show  a  woman  when  he  loves  her," 

said  this  same  great  poet,  writing  to 
his  wife.  But  Browning  had  as  many 
soul-sides  as  humanity.  Hence  it  has 
been  truly  called  a  new  life,  like  con- 
version, or  marriage,  or  the  mystery 


AND  COLLEGE  TAUGHT       157 

of  a  great  sorrow,  —  a  change  and  a 
bracing  change  in  our  outlook  on 
the  whole  world,  to  discover  Brown- 
ing. The  college  should  be  our 
Browning,  revealing  the  motive 
power  of  every  life,  the  poetry  of 
good  and  bad.  It  is  only  the  "little 
folk  of  little  soul "  who  come  out  of 
college  as  the  initiated  members  of 
an  exclusive  set.  Justify  yourself  and 
your  college  years  by  your  catholic 
democracy. 

I  have  spoken  of  some  justifica- 
tions of  these  four  years.  Nobody 
knows  better  than  I  that  not  one  of 
them  is  new,  for  there  are  no  new 
justifications.  When  an  old  neigh- 
bor of  mine  in  the  woods  had  a  vio- 
lent cough  and  someone  said  to  him: 
"Why  don't  you  take  one  of  these 
cough  mixtures?"  be  retorted: 


158         COLLEGE  TEACHERS 

"  What  is  there  in  any  on  'em  that 
there  ain't  in  molasses  ?  "  That  is  my 
feeling  about  novelties  on  occasions 
like  this.  As  Professor  Copeland 
would  put  it,  creative  writing  at  such 
a  time  is  "like  wringing  water  out 
of  a  dry  grindstone."  Yet  the  story 
of  love  is  not  the  only  old  story  that 
is  eternally  new;  and  in  the  larger 
sense  the  story  of  your  college  is  a 
story  of  love — of  love  and  of  faith, 
and  of  hope  and  of  courage.  The 
different  parts  of  what  I  have  said 
may  not  seem  to  cohere;  but  as  I  see 
them  they  do  belong  together,  and 
the  sum  and  substance  of  them  all 
is  this:  It  is  the  duty  of  the  college 
not  to  train  only,  but  to  inspire;  to 
inspire  not  to  learning  only,  but  to  a 
disciplined  appreciation  of  the  best 
in  literature,  in  art,  and  in  life,  to  a 


AND  COLLEGE  TAUGHT  159 
catholic  taste,  to  a  universal  sym- 
pathy. It  is  the  duty  of  the  student 
to  take  the  inspiration,  to  be  not 
disobedient  to  the  heavenly  vision, 
but  to  justify  four  years  of  delight, 
by  scholarship  at  once  accurate  and 
sympathetic,  by  a  finer  culture,  by 
a  leadership  without  self-seeking  or 
pride,  by  a  whole-souled  democ- 
racy. How  simple  and  how  old  it  all 
is!  Yet  it  is  not  so  simple  that  any 
one  man  or  woman  has  done  it  to 
perfection ;  nor  so  old  that  any  one 
part  of  it  fails  to  offer  fresh  pro- 
blems and  fresh  stimulus  to  the 
most  ambitious  of  you  all.  Mr.  D.  L. 
Moody  used  to  preach  that  the  gift 
of  salvation  was  not  generally  ac- 
cepted, because  men  would  not  be- 
lieve that  God  may  be  had  for  the 
asking  and  even  for  the  receiving. 


160          COLLEGE  TEACHERS 

"As  if,"  he  said,  "  a  teacher  had  of- 
fered his  watch  successively  to  a 
whole  class  of  boys,  and  when  one 
took  it,  the  others  cried  out :  *  I  'd 
have  taken  it  if  I  had  thought  he 
really  meant  to  give  it.' "  Nothing 
is  harder  than  to  take  freely  and 
eagerly  the  best  that  is  offered  us, 
and  never  turn  away  to  the  pursuit 
of  false  gods.  Now  the  best  that  is  of- 
fered in  college  is  the  inspiration  to 
learn,  and  having  learned,  to  do :  — 

"Friends  of  the  great,  the  high,  the  perilous  years, 
Upon  the  brink  of  mighty  things  we  stand  — 
Of  golden  harvests  and  of  silver  tears, 
And  griefs  and  pleasures  that  like  grains  of  sand 
Gleam  in  the  hour-glass,  yield  their  place  and 
die." 

So  said  the  college  poet.  He  spoke 
to  young  men,  but  the  spirit  of  which 
he  spoke  belongs  to  young  women 
also:  — 


AND  COLLEGE  TAUGHT       161 

"The  portals  are  open,  the  white  road  leads 

Through  thicket  and  garden ,  o'er  stone  and  sod . 
On,  up  1  Boot  and  saddle!  Give  spurs  to  your 

steeds  1 
There 's  a  city  beleaguered  that  cries  for  men's 

deeds, 
For  the  faith  that  is  strength  and  the  love  that 

is  God! 
On,    through    the   dawning  1    Humanity 

calls  I 

Life's  not  a  dream  in  the  clover! 
Onto  the  walls,  on  to  the  walls, 
On  to  the  walls,  and  over." 

"Art  without  an  ideal,"  said  a 
great  woman, '  'is  neither  nature  nor 
art.  The  question  involves  the  whole 
difference  between  Phidias  and  Mme. 
Tussaud."  Let  us  never  forget  that 
the  chief  business  of  college  teach- 
ers and  college  taught  is  the  giving 
and  receiving  of  ideals,  and  that  the 
ideal  is  a  burning  and  a  shining  light, 
not  now  only,  or  now  and  a  year  or 
two  more,  but  for  all  time.  What 


162         COLLEGE  TEACHERS 

else  is  the  patriot's  love  of  country, 
the  philosopher's  love  of  truth,  the 
poet's  love  of  beauty,  the  teacher's 
love  of  learning,  the  good  man's  love 
of  an  honest  life,  than  keeping  the 
ideal,  not  merely  to  look  at,  but  to 
see  by  ?  In  its  light,  and  only  in  its 
light,  the  greatest  things  are  done. 
Thus  the  ideal  is  not  merely  the  most 
beautiful  thing  in  the  world;  it  is  the 
source  of  all  high  efficiency.  In 
every  change,  in  every  joy  or  sorrow 
that  the  coming  years  may  bring, 
do  you  who  graduate  to-day  remem- 
ber that  nothing  is  so  practical  as  a 
noble  ideal  steadily  and  bravely  pur- 
sued, and  that  now,  as  of  old,  it  is 
the  wise  men  who  see  and  follow  the 
guiding  star. 


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